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I need your help

Process 1 + Process 2+ Process 3 = total

Problem 1: If process 1 value is -900 but the total value is 300 I need to find how many percent contribution of process 1 to the total value?

Problem 2: If process 1 value is 300 but the total value is -900, How many percent contribution of process 1 compared to the total value?

Thank you

Manee Chotiros
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    That entirely depends on how you define "percent contribution." The most reasonable interpretation to me is to simply return $\frac{-900}{300}$ and convert that into a percentage by "multiplying by one" in the form of $100%$, so here in problem 1 calling it $-300%$... or if you don't like the idea of writing negative percentages, using words "$300%$ anti-contribution" or similar. – JMoravitz Mar 15 '22 at 15:22
  • " I need to find how many percent contribution of process 1 to the total value?" The comment of @JMoravitz makes sense to me. However, I think the real question is : what is the background of the problem? That is, what do you intend to do with the computation of percent contribution of process 1 to the total value? Please edit your question to provide background on the question that you posed. – user2661923 Mar 15 '22 at 15:57
  • I do not really agree to JMoaravitz. Let the contribution be process 1=$-900$, process 2=process 3=$600$ In this case process 2 and 3 would contribute $200%$ each. This doesn't make sense to me. The mixing of positive an negative numbers does not work in context of percentages. – callculus42 Mar 15 '22 at 16:58
  • @callculus42 To me saying that they each contribute 200% apiece sounds exactly right. Why do you think it does not sound correct? Because $200%$ is greater than $100%$? So what? You have $200% + 200% + (-300%) = 100%$ so it all adds up to $100%$ as expected. – JMoravitz Mar 15 '22 at 20:06
  • As always with percentages, it is important to remember that percentages are in reference to a comparison with some other number. Here, process 2 contributing $600$ compared to the total of $300$, indeed we do have that $600$ is equal to $200%$ of $300$. Or, phrased another way, having contributed 600 is indeed equal to twice as much as the final total of 300... What sounds wrong about that last sentence? – JMoravitz Mar 15 '22 at 20:09
  • Sure, if you want to, you can talk about process 2 and process 3 each contributing $50%$ of the positive contributions and process 1 contributing 100% of the negative contributions, but that isn't what was asked and changes what the "of" is in "percentage of" – JMoravitz Mar 15 '22 at 20:15
  • The reason why I dislike the sentence "600 is 50% of the positive contributions" is because that sentence alone does not tell us anything about what to expect about the final result, just that it will be at most 1200. On the other hand, "600 is 200% of the final total" does tell us that the final total is exactly 300. Both sentences are of course correct, but the second tells us a great deal more about the final total which is usually of the most importance. – JMoravitz Mar 15 '22 at 20:23

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