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Re: Percentage Formating

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg111041] Re: Percentage Formating
• From: Murray Eisenberg <murray at math.umass.edu>
• Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2010 01:03:30 -0400 (EDT)

You may be treading on dangerous ground here, since the percent sign % 
in Mathematica refers to the preceding Output! So do be aware that with 
some things you might do to include % in output, the result should be 
regarded as just a display format and not as something you want to feed 
into subsequent evaluations.

So here goes. Assuming you don't want to do your own conversion from 
decimal fraction into percentage, I looked up "percent" in the 
Documentation Center and found it in the Units package. Thus:

   Needs["Units`"]

   Convert[0.05263, Percent]
5.263 Percent

And then for the actual form you want, the most direct way is:

   percentage = Convert[0.05263, Percent] /. Percent -> "%"
5.263 %

Notice that this output includes a space before the percent sign. That's 
not just an accident, because there's actually a product there, as is 
revealed by:

   FullForm[percentage]
Times[5.263`,"%"]

And this means you CAN use this kind of percent representation in 
further evaluation -- although I'd be cautious as to how far to go. For 
example:

   twice = 2 * percentage
10.526 %

To go back to decimals, you have to be careful, because at this point 
the percent sign is being carried as just a text character. So you need 
first to change that text character into the symbol Percent:

   Convert[twice /. "%" -> Percent, Real]
0.10526


On 7/17/2010 8:16 AM, SMiranda wrote:
> There's an easy way of formating percentage numbers form reporting
> purposes...
> I mean... 0.05263 -->  5.26%
>
> Thanks !
>

-- 
Murray Eisenberg                     murray at math.umass.edu
Mathematics & Statistics Dept.
Lederle Graduate Research Tower      phone 413 549-1020 (H)
University of Massachusetts                413 545-2859 (W)
710 North Pleasant Street            fax   413 545-1801
Amherst, MA 01003-9305