Divide by null display values

Question

What is the best way (most intuitive for users) or best practice for displaying the results of dividing by 0 when reporting? However, in the report I fix this error when displaying it on a humanoid report; I am not sure how to note this.

An example would be something like a Weight / Income relationship. There may not have been income for this terminal on a certain day, but some shipments (which would have weight) could be shipped.

The current reports that I look at process this by putting 0 in the column, however this can be misleading as it is not technically correct.

Another thought would be to leave it empty; however, the user would not know why the field was left blank.

I also examined the standard Excel error, #DIV/0! however, this tends to make the report erratic.

I am curious what others have done in the past for this situation.

Answer 1

In our case, we use either empty space or "NaN" (for a non-number), and sometimes an asterisk "*" depending on what the end user prefers. (We give them a choice at the planning stage.)

Answer 2

In the past, I used the single "-", especially when working with excel. From a best practice point of view, I think "0 *" with the bottom note * This separation has no income. "

Answer 3

If clutter is a problem, how about an error symbol? If color is available, red “X” may work. If usually black and white, maybe "E". Include the legend in the header and footer to indicate what the symbol represents.

Answer 4

We have two different policies for this kind of case, depending on the context. Either N / A or Error.

Answer 5

Best practice depends on what division by zero means in context.

The purpose of any report is to communicate. From a business perspective, nothing is reported to NaN, or # DIV / 0. They need to know what is really happening.

If there is a legitimate reason for a value of zero, this means that the calculated metric does not matter. You indicate that sometimes income is legally zero, and it’s reasonable to show something like N / A (which, incidentally, should be familiar to almost everyone on the business side - this is a very common abbreviation).

However, if there is no legitimate reason, then this is a mistake, and it should either be shown as such or completely excluded. In your situation, the weight may also be zero, but do not pretend that the weight of zero is equal to the error in the source data. In this situation, your choice is to either remove this element (day, whatever) from the report altogether, or show it with something that marks it as an error (for example, "Error").

Answer 6

Other options that you might want to consider are N / A - not applicable N / R - no NRP result - the result is impossible and similar, assuming your target audience is not a programmer.

You only need to explain the N / A value to each user 5 or 6 times before they begin to remember it.

Answer 7

You can try one of the following:

• E / 0
• Err / 0

I like the second one because IMO actually reads only five characters: Error Divide by Zero