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Group list of data into 3 groups

Group list of data into 3 groups

Group list of data into 3 groups

(OP)
I have a list of data I'd like to group into 3 groups, top third, middle third and lower third.  Can someone give me some help on how to do this?

Thanks...

--
Fighter Pilot
Manufacturing Engineer

RE: Group list of data into 3 groups

Have you tried using the RANK or PERCENTRANK function? The Format/Conditional format command can be used to color-code your data, too.

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     "...students of traffic are beginning to realize the false economy of mechanically controlled traffic, and hand work by trained officers will again prevail."

              Wm. Phelps Eno, ca. 1928

RE: Group list of data into 3 groups

Yup.  percentrank looks like it will work on unsorted arrays.  Conditional forming based on a formula including percentrank would be a good way to designate items in an unsorted list.

I assume you know how to sort if that is desired?

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RE: Group list of data into 3 groups

If you are looking for a manual way to do it you could do something like this (I'm assuming your data is in Column A)

in B1 enter a formula like this:  

=IF(A1<(MAX(A:A)*1/3),"Bottom",IF(A1>(MAX(A:A)*(2/3)),"Top","Middle"))

Then copy this down the B column for all your data.  The B Column will contain "Bottom", "Middle", or "Top".  You can then sort (<Data><Sort>) the spreadsheet by Column B.  

I hope that helps.  

RE: Group list of data into 3 groups

(OP)
Percentile function seemed to work.  It looks like if I want to physically group the data I'd have to make a pivot table.  I just used PERCENTILE(data list,0.33) and PERCENTILE(data list,0.66) to find the breaks and manually scanned the data after doing an ascending sort.

--
Fighter Pilot
Manufacturing Engineer

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