Trouble Sorting Averages of Randomly Generated Numbers

[GStrawley]

Hello:

Please excuse me if I am missing something obvious, but I am stumped.

I have created a worksheet that contains two columns of 200 randomly generated whole numbers from 0 to 5 each using the formula =ROUND(5*RAND(),0). (These are meant to be grades in a hypothetical class of students.) I have a third column containing the weighted averages of the two grades.

When I try to sort the student records according to the averages in descending order using Data:Sort, Excel fails to do a proper sort. Instead, I get what seems to be a bunch of randomly arranged records. I even tried adding a fourth column using the VALUE function thinking that the formulas were somehow throwing off the sort, but that didn't work either.

Can anybody point me in the right direction?

This isn't even supposed to be the hard stuff. I still need to work with this data in a Pivot Table!

Thanks,

George

[NlCO]

Every time Excel makes a calculation it will refresh the Rand formula, try pressing Delete and you will se what I'm talking about. No changes but the numbers changed.
What you'll have to do is paste the values to average the results.

Saludos

NlCO

[Paul Sheppard]

Hello:

Please excuse me if I am missing something obvious, but I am stumped.

I have created a worksheet that contains two columns of 200 randomly generated whole numbers from 0 to 5 each using the formula =ROUND(5*RAND(),0). (These are meant to be grades in a hypothetical class of students.) I have a third column containing the weighted averages of the two grades.

When I try to sort the student records according to the averages in descending order using Data:Sort, Excel fails to do a proper sort. Instead, I get what seems to be a bunch of randomly arranged records. I even tried adding a fourth column using the VALUE function thinking that the formulas were somehow throwing off the sort, but that didn't work either.

Can anybody point me in the right direction?

This isn't even supposed to be the hard stuff. I still need to work with this data in a Pivot Table!

Thanks,

George

Hi George

Try copying the column of randomly generated numbers you want to sort on and paste special values over the top, then sort,

[GStrawley]

Thanks for the help. Using the special paste command did the job.

-- George