How to calculate Growth% from Dataset

[QuantEdge]

Hi excelers,
Is there a simple exel function to calculate the Growth in percent % from a array of numbers! (see attached example)

please keep your solution as short and simple as possible as it will be used on a massive data set!
thx *-*

[MrShorty]

Short but useless answer -- Yes, there is an Excel function (or combination of functions) that will calculate growth percent. As with many of these kinds of questions, the first piece of information that is needed is how you intend to define growth as a percent (which Excel cannot do for you -- you have to define this outside of Excel).

Examples:
1) Perhaps you mean a simple "what percent of initial value is the final value" -- =(final-initial)/initial
2) Or maybe this represents a series of cash flows for an investment or annuity, and the IRR() or XIRR() or similar financial function would give a correct indication of growth rate -- Only you can know if these financial functions are appropriate for your scenario. See Excel's help files for financial functions to see what functions are available and how they work.
3) Or maybe this is more of a math type function -- such as a population growth, where one is looking to perform a regression against an exponential type function, where one of the parameters in the regression represents this nebulous "growth percent" quantity that you are trying to calculate. The first step in this kind of regression function is to define the regression function (again, this is not something Excel can really do for you).

Define what you mean by "growth percent", and I am confident we can figure out how to program Excel to calculate it.