John, Thank you for your reply. I am well-versed in VBA programming,
but a complete dunce at advanced mathematics like this. The problem
is that the data is very "raw" -- about 12,000 datapoints ranging from
0.22 to over 100,000. You probably know that this is the kind of mess
one sometimes gets from clients who don't really understand the ratios
that are being asked for. The objective is to pare the data down to
the "reasonable" values and get the bulk of it for subsequent figuring
of quartiles. May I use the Reply to Author button to reply to you
directly? James

On Jul 9, 1:04?pm, wrote:
James,

There are many "sexy" ways to do it, but if you only have to do it
once or twice....

1) Calculate the mean and standard deviation
2) Calculate the upper and lower cutoff values
3) Sort the data
4) Manually delete those above/below the cutoff values

If this is something you will do on a regular basis, then it may be
worth pursing a more automated method.

HTH,
John