Sorting & Connecting with formula

Hi everyone,

I have a (from my perspective ) really complicated question. I hope one of you can help me on this.
I have a list with different categories and several characteristics per category.
My goal is to identify the 10 strongest growing characteristics (I guess by sorting them in descending order) and then show them in this order, but organized in the respective categories.
e.g.: if "Psychographic">"Demographic" and "geographic" and "behavioralistic", then put "Psychographic, including its subordinated characteristics that are included in the top 10, first.
Follow this order until all Top10 members are included.

It is super hard to explain it in words, but maybe the screenshot below can help

I would be super grateful for any help!!!
Thanks,
Sabini

excel_forum.xlsx

Hi,

Actually screenshots are of surprisingly little use on an Excel Forum. If you could attach an actual workbook with your desired results clearly outlined that would be very beneficial.

Regards

Hi,

Not quite sure I understand. You want a Top Ten, but you wish the actual Categories (e.g. Psychodemographic, Geographic, etc.) to form part of this number?

So, actually, in your example, you technically only have a Top Six, since four of your list are Category entries. Is this correct? If so, can you not re-define your desired output so that it is always exclusive of the Categories themselves?

Regards

Ok, but I'm afraid it's still not clear to me. For example, what if the top ten come from only three categories, and not four? Does that mean you'll then want a Top Seven (to 'make it up' to the 'Ten')? And if the top ten come from only two categories, you'll want a Top Eight?

Regards

Hi,

I feel that your logic may be slightly flawed here in that it seems to contain a circular argument.

You say that you want a Top Ten regardless, and that, in order to determine the proportion of this ten which consist of Characteristics, we must first determine how many different Categories are represented by the top ten Characteristics.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that all four Categories are represented, just as in your example. However, and this is where the flaw lies - this does not necessarily mean that the top six - since this is the number of Characteristics[/I] we are looking for in this case - will come from all four Categories (they do in your example, though this is sheer good luck!).

To expand on the example, let's say that, of the top ten, five come from the Demographic Category, one from the Geographic, two from the Behavioralistic and two from the Psychodemographic. So we know we're looking for a Top Six.

So let's assume now that we further refine that Top Ten into a Top Six and find that it comprises the five from the Demographic Category and the one from the Geographic.

What are we to do here? How can we have a Top Ten? Or do we have these six with their two corresponding Categories, i.e. a total of eight, and then...what? Add the other two Categories on their own to make up numbers, since they were represented in the original Top Ten, even though they don't feature in this new Top Six and so there won't be any Characteristics listed with them?

Can you see what I'm getting at?

I can't help but feel that you're making a very strange statistical decision to say "I want ten regardless of whether they're a Category or a Characteristic" - why not just the top ten Characteristics together with their relevant Categories - which is surely more logical - whether that makes a total of eleven, twelve, thirteen or fourteen in the list?

Regards