I need to display the difference in percentage from the old value with the new one. I got the formula and it's working except I don't know what I should display if one if the value is zero and the other isn't.
If the initial value is 1 and the new value is 10 the difference is 900%
If the initial value is 0 and the new value is 10 the difference is ???
I also have limited real estate to write.
I was thinking of writting INF% but that doesn't feel user frendly.
Answer
If you don't want to leave off the percentage, then what you show depends on your data.
If your data constantly fluctuates between 0 and 1 or similar small numbers, showing the increase as 1,000% is misleading. In the same way, values that are often in the millions with a sudden 0 value only showing a 100% decrease may not be helpful.
Mathematically, no percentage is correct, so you can say whatever you want. But choose something that will be of value to the user and help them interpret what's going on. If 0 is a frequent and acceptable state, I'd recommend not drawing too much attention to it with large percentages. On the other hand, if 0 is bad, wrong, or otherwise represents an unexpected spike in the data, showing an abnormally large percentage can help draw attention to it.
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