As for the calculations, Apple updates roughly every six hours and I think (the algorithms not being public for a good reason, I have no real proof), they take into account the total sum revenue during the last period, but also use the relative delta revenue as a factor, so even with slightly lower revenue a suddenly popular app can appear higher in the rankings.
They also seem to change the algorithms every once in a while, we've seen pretty drastic changes overnight a few times, eventually though the top apps always normalize around the usual suspects, so it's possible that they just do some sort of reset of historical data that also affect rankings.