{"id":1296,"date":"2013-01-07T01:28:55","date_gmt":"2013-01-07T06:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=1296"},"modified":"2013-01-01T08:39:18","modified_gmt":"2013-01-01T13:39:18","slug":"percent-change-a-review-tutorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2013\/01\/percent-change-a-review-tutorial\/","title":{"rendered":"Percent Change – A Review Tutorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n

This may be a waste of time, but I review how to calculate the percent change.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I feel silly about this post. I am going to show how to calculate the percent change in numbers. I learned this when I was 12 or 10 or something in school math. A look at the recent media discussions of the fiscal cliff and such reveal that many people don’t know how to perform this calculation. So here goes:<\/p>\n

Percent Change = (New Value – Old Value)\/(Old Value)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not very complicated, right? Let’s take a real-world example.<\/p>\n

The Payroll Tax, formerly known as the Social Security tax, will increase from 4.2% of salary to 6.2%. Most media outlets proclaim this to be a 2% increase. Gosh, how wrong! Let’s go back to the formula and walk through this.<\/p>\n

If you made $100, you paid 420 cents in taxes. Under the change, you will pay 620 cents in taxes:<\/p>\n

Percent Change = (620 – 420)\/420<\/p>\n

Percent Change = 200\/420<\/p>\n

Percent Change = 0.48<\/p>\n

Percent Change = 48%<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

WHAT? Payroll taxes are rising 48% !?!?!?!??!? They told me they were rising 2%! What gives?<\/p>\n

Perhaps the media:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. is buddies with those who are raising the tax and doesn’t want them to look bad<\/li>\n
  2. doesn’t know anything about math and the definition of percent change<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    There is probably something of both 1 and 2 in the story, but more likely 2 is the dominant factor. Have you ever discussed “higher math” with a person having a journalism degree?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    by Dwayne Phillips This may be a waste of time, but I review how to calculate the percent change. I feel silly about this post. I am going to show how to calculate the percent change in numbers. I learned this when I was 12 or 10 or something in school math. A look at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,90,29,41],"tags":[154,207,151,163],"class_list":["post-1296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-education","category-government","category-money","tag-communication","tag-education","tag-government","tag-money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1297,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296\/revisions\/1297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}