Any help gratefully recieved – can anyone translate this into english for me?
From Microsoft’s “support” page:
Bin numbers represent the intervals you want the Histogram tool to use for measuring the input data in the data analysis. The Histogram tool counts the number of data points between the current bin number and the adjoining higher bin, if any. A number is counted in a particular bin if it is equal to or less than the bin number down to the last bin. All values below the first bin value are counted together, as are the values above the last bin value.
Is it just me or is that written in gobbledegook
My problem is this.
I want to create a histogram of a data series which is a load of years from about 1900 to 2012. The bins I need are: 1900-1969, 1970-1979, 1980-1989, and so on… When I read the excel “help” i figured that if i create my bin numbers, using the lower of each bin (ie 1900, 1970, 1980 etc etc) and then run it, the output should show me how many of my data points are equal to or greater than that fugure, up to the next bin. ie, if I have 5 data points for 2005, when I run the histogram I should get 5 as the output for the bin starting 2000.
But excel, in its wisdom, gives the output as 5 for the bin starting 2010?! What the hell? Have I totally missed the point of what is going on here?
