If a component (eg seg A) is positive, thus providing growth, that component is still considered to be contributing to the market change. It just so happens that after everything is calculated, the final market change is negative, so it’s a loss in total. It helped in promoting growth, just not enough.

As for your second example, I’m not sure what calculation method was used. But I feel it’s
Seg A = 400 / (-100) * 100% = -400%
and
Seg B = (-500) / (-100) * 100% = 500%

But either way, I hope you see that the percentages are *really* hard to explain and understand. Which is why the absolute-everything method might be more appropriate.

Definitely a new way of viewing contribution for me.

1. Would you say this applies to for instance market growth as well?
Say:
Total market growth: -100
Segment A: 400
Segment B: -500

Then:
Contribution Segment A = 400/(400+500)*100
” = 44.4%
Contribution Segment B = 55.6%

For me, it would appear that seg A also contributes to the loss, which it does not. In terms of user-friendliness, it could be misunderstood, no?

2. When calculating in the same manner as I would if only positive numbers. Then:
Contribution Seg A = 400%
Contribution Seg B = -500%

Do you think this is wrong?
Mentioning I am not crazy with this method, since you sometimes – when difference between totalt growth and segment growth is large – get really high percentages…

34 / (34 + 584) * 100% = 5.50%

452 / (452 + 676) * 100% = 40.07%

I hope that answers the question

act 34 Budget -584

act -452 Budget -676

What will be the % of achivement of actual to the budget

I learnt something new today

A contributed 45.79% to that net loss. B contributed 54.21% to that net loss.

If I were a business person, I would say B is not a good investment…

The percentages are indications of contributions to the net effect. They don’t have to be negative if the net effect is negative (-16 in this case).

thanks for your clarifications.

1 more question.

A contributes 87 ( 45.79% ), B -103 ( 54.21% ) , overall result is -16 ( 87 – 103 )

my confusion is how the percentage contribution relates to the net of -16 ?

i mean , A which contributes 87, is not 45.79% of -16 …

for both positive numbers, the percentage contributions has definite and traceable link to the total net

thanks

Then category A contributed 87/190 *100% = 45.79% to your bottom line. And category B contributed 103/190 *100% = 54.21% to your bottom line.

B made a more significant contribution to your bottom line than A (54.21 > 45.79). In this case, it just means it affected your bottom line more. That doesn’t mean you made more profit, because B was a loss.

Don’t think of the numbers with exact values (positive or negative). Think of them as how much impact the categories have on your business’s bottom line.

in 1 year, category A makes profit of say 87
in the same year, category B makes a loss of -103

how do we calculate the percentange contribution of A and B ?

if i use the abs method, A contributes +45.80%, and B -54.21% ?

doesnt compute with me

thanks

What would happen if the numbers were 0, 0, 0, 0, 4, 6? The first 4 should contribute 0%, the 5th number 40% and the last number 60%? It doesn’t make sense to me to give percentage contributions to the first 4 zeroes…

So the first answer you suggested has a specific condition. Which makes sense. And equally easy to explain to a non-tech, non-math layperson as the “all are 0%” explanation.

Your second answer is also correct. It’s a little hard to explain NaN to a layperson though… the context is a financial report. The user doesn’t care how edge cases are handled, only that they’re handled, and easily understood.

Thanks for your comment!