What is the Easiest Way to Get The Difference of Two Numbers?

What is the Easiest Way to Get The Difference of Two Numbers?

UPDATE: Why isn't this working?

function GetDifference(Old, New)
	if Old < New then
		print(New-Old)		
	else
		print(Old-New)	
	end
end

That would be subtraction -. The difference between two numbers is just the missing gap between them on a number line. Difference can be positive or negative.

Calculating difference

Say you start with the value 5, and your new value is now 15. The difference between these two numbers is 10 (the same as their distance away from each other on a number line). You can fact check this by subtracting the old value, from the new value 15 - 5 which is indeed, ten.

Negative difference

In the case where your new value is less than your old value, you'll end up with a negative difference. This means you've gone down in value over time. If you have 5 dollars, and over the course of 1 week you now only have 1 dollar, your difference is -4 dollars (or 1 - 5 which is your new - old formula). This could also be known as your delta, which just means change or difference.

You can try using math.abs() to get the absolute value of the difference between your two numbers. That will avoid the negative numbers as it seems that is what you are attempting to do.

print(math.abs(Old - New))

or

print(math.abs(New - Old))

They should yield the same positive values which is the space between the two numbers.