So you are saying that you want to apply some additional sort of weighting
in addition to the weighting by the number of students who took that test?

If you've got your number of students for the 3 tests in A1:A3, and your
weightings 35%,25%,40% in B1:B3, then you can produce a weighted number with
C1=A1*B1 and similarly down to C3. Your number of successful students from
test X could now become
=1110*C1/SUM(C$1:C$3) and you can copy that down to C2 & C3 (and deal with
rounding appropriately).
--
David Biddulph

wrote in message
ups.com...
I think you multiplied, not divided, by 71%. For example, 146*71% ~=
104, but 146/71% ~= 206.
You are right I meant to multiply.

My question is, is there a way to
weight the different tests like test X =35%, test Y = 25% and test Z =
40% and have that come out to the 1110 students?
I understand your approach except for test X we only have 146 students
your example yeilds 389 students which is way to much for the test. Do
we have another alternitive method?

wrote:
wrote:
Let me first start by saying that I am not the smartest
person in the world I learn everyday.

Actually, it is the smartest people that "learn everyday" ;-).

We have a poplulation of 1563 students.
Are program will only allow 1110 students. We have 3 tests we
work from. Test X has 146 students, test Y has 723 and test Z has 694.
Since we have only 1110 openings what I did was to divide the
1110/1563. This would give me a percentage of about 71.0172744721689%.
Then I took the figure and I divided each test group
146/71.0172744721689%, 723 /71.0172744721689% and the
694/71.0172744721689%. When rounded this gives me 104 children for test
X, 513 for test Y and 493 for text Z.

I think you multiplied, not divided, by 71%. For example, 146*71% ~=
104, but 146/71% ~= 206.

My question is, is there a way to
weight the different tests like test X =35%, test Y = 25% and test Z =
40% and have that come out to the 1110 students?

1110*35% (about 389) should come from test X. 1110*25% (about 278)
should come from test Y. 1110*40% (444) should come from test Z.

Note that that sums to 1111, not 1110. One way to ensure the proper
sum is to compute the last category not by 1110*40%, but effectively by
1110 - 389 - 278. It might also help to use so-called "banker's
rounding" (round xxx.50...0 to the nearest even number). But that does
not obviate the need to compute the last category in the aforementioned
manner in the general case -- albeit sufficient in this particular case
by coincidence.