Finding decreased value PLEASE HELP ASAP!

I have to use 3 quarters of data for various 'districts'. Based on the 3
quarters of data, I have to indicate the district that has best implemented
strategies to best reduce their numbers over the 3Q's of time. How can I do
this? What formula or function would I use to calcuate the numbers for each
district?

"grimschris" <[email protected]> wrote...
>I have to use 3 quarters of data for various 'districts'. Based on the 3
>quarters of data, I have to indicate the district that has best
>implemented strategies to best reduce their numbers over the 3Q's of time.
>How can I do this? What formula or function would I use to calcuate the
>numbers for each district?

Does 3 quarters of data mean you have data as of the end of those 3
quarters?

Anyway, it seems like you want to find either the largest absolute or
relative decrease in costs from the earliest period to the latest period.
You'd need to start by subtracting latest cost figures from earliest cost
figures for each district. Then for relative differences only, divide the
differences previous calculated by earliest costs to get percentage
decrease.

At this point you should have two ranges of calculations, AbsoluteChanges
and RelativeChanges. If you had a corresponding range of district IDs, which
I'll refer to as DistrictIDs, you can identify the district with the largest
decreases using the formulas

absolute change:
=INDEX(DistrictIDs,MATCH(MIN(AbsoluteChanges),AbsoluteChanges,0))

relative change:
=INDEX(DistrictIDs,MATCH(MIN(RelativeChanges),RelativeChanges,0))