Assigning Rank Orders To Sets Of Data - HP 39g Master Manual

Assigning rank orders to sets of data

It is occasionally handy to be able to assign rank orders to a set of data. You
might be running a Quiz Competition Night, or recording times for the 100
meter sprint, but in either case it is handy to be able to sort the data into
descending order and assign rankings. This is easy for small sets of data,
but becomes difficult for larger sets.
Let us assume a set of 20 competitors in the 100 meter sprint, with times
recorded to two decimal places, and competitors numbered 1 to 20. Suppose
that the results were as shown right...
Enter the competitor numbers as column C1 and the
times in column C2. I'm going to assume here that the
competitor numbers also run from 1 to 20 but this may
not be the case. In addition to this, put the numbers 1
to 20 into column C3 also. The can be a bit tedious to
type in for lists longer than 20, so you could use the
expressions MAKELIST(X,X,1,20,1) C1 and
C1 C3 to shortcut the process, replacing 20 with
whatever is needed. Make sure that the
is selected.
The result should look
like this...
Now position the highlight on column C2 and press the
key. In the SORT SETUP screen (shown below
right) enter C1 as the Dependent column. This will
have the effect of pairing columns C1 and C2 and then
sorting column C2 into ascending order, re-
arranging column C1 to reflect the changes.
When ready, press
sort are shown right.
The final column C3 has not been re-arranged.
With a few alterations, it contains the rankings.
Looking down the column it can be seen that
there are two values of 11.34 (the 4
Their ranking should therefore both be
changed to 4. Continuing this process down
the length of column 3 will produce the
rankings for the whole 20 competitors.
. The results of this
th
and 5
147
Competitor Time
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
option
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
th
).
12.23
11.47
11.34
12.87
12.23
11.30
10.51
11.34
11.46
12.34
12.23
11.50
12.01
11.97
12.05
12.87
12.02
12.52
11.37
10.75