Shell Programming and Scripting

so i'm have been stifled here inn my attempts at this.

i need to calculate an unusual figure.

what is the percentage difference between 400 and 3?

usually, to get the percentage, you just divide the smaller number by the bigger number. then multiply the answer by 100.

in this case however, 3 divided 400 gives a 0.0075. that means nothing to me. how can i get the real percentage of this?

Code:

$ printf "%0.2f\%\n"  $(( 100 * (3.00/400)))
0.75%

this actually might work but i'm not exactly sure if its 100% correct. let me see if i can explain this in a different way.

if you made $400 yesterday, and made $3 tomorrow. that is huge difference. what is the percentage of that difference? its way more than 75%. it near the 300% range. my question is, how can we get the exact percentage...even though it will be over 100?

This sounds more like a question to a math forum!
However, the percentage calculation depends on what you take as the reference.

Code:

echo "scale=5; 3/400*100" | bc
.75000

echo "scale=5; 400/3*100" | bc
13333.33300

--ahamed

Are you referring to the "Relative Difference"??

Calculation for relative difference is ((400/3)-1)*100

1. Solution provided by fpmurphy is the answer to question "What percentage of my yesterday's income is today's income?" And it's 0.75%, not 75%.

2. If you made $400 yesterday and $3 today, there's a reduction in 99.25% of your income -> (((400-3)/400)*100)

3. And looking at it the other way, you made 13233.33% more yesterday than the amount you made today -> (((400-3)/3)*100) Usually you don't get paid $3 the next day after you've been paid $400, so you don't get to see a figure like 13233% increase or 99.25% decrease !!

By the way, how is this related to 'Shell Programming and Scripting' forum?

Similar to balajesuri (option 2)

Mathematically shouldn't the answer be negative?:

Code:

echo "scale=2;(((3 - 400) * 100)/400)"|bc
-99.25 %