Part IV: Managing and Analyzing Data
not provide a function that converts any number base to decimal. You’re limited to binary,
octal, and hexadecimal.
Classifying values
Often, you may have values that need to be classified into a group. For example, if you have
ages of people, you might want to classify them into groups such as 17 or younger, 18–24,
25–34, and so on.
The easiest way to perform this classification is with a lookup table. Figure 25.17 shows
ages in column A and classifications in column B. Column B uses the lookup table in D2:E9.
The formula in cell B2 is as follows:
=VLOOKUP(A2,$D$2:$E$9,2)
FIGURE 25.17
Using a lookup table to classify ages into age ranges
This formula was copied to the cells below.
You can also use a lookup table for nonnumeric data. Figure 25.18 shows a lookup table that
is used to assign a region to a state.
