Bryan,

Not disagreeing with what you say, but it may be too simplistic. In some
situations, a place will carry a weighting. So a 1st, 2nd and a 3rd may
weight more highly than 3 2nds. As so often happens, the true answer is ...
it depends ... :-)

--

HTH

RP
(remove nothere from the email address if mailing direct)


"Bryan Hessey"
wrote in message
news:Bryan.Hessey.1tcg2d_1123333505.0493@excelforu m-nospam.com...

Sounds like homework, but,

7th of 17 is less of less merit than 4th of 10, but you don't need much
maths to prove that, simply convert 4/10 to 17ths
to make 10 into 17 you multiply by 1.7,
and 4 * 1.7 = 6.8
so 4th of 10 is = to 6.8th of 17, just ahead of 7th.

to use decimal, 4/10 = .4 whereas 7/17 = .4117647 and last will be = 1
in an area where the lowest number is the better result.



Saxman Wrote:
Firstly my problem is mathematical....

If a horse in a race finishes 7/17 (seventh of seventeen runners) and
another horse finishes 4/10, which has the greater merit? What is the
best way to represent such a problem?

If I import such fractions into Excel from a web page as text, how can
I
best convert such data for mathematical manipulation, or back to a
fraction?

This could be a problem where a horse finishes 17/17 as it would
require
the first two digits (rather than one) to be selected.


--
Bryan Hessey
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