I have a great lump of statistics - now what do I do with them?

[KatyMac]

I'm trying to find out if there are any trends in when I have children, eg when they start, when they finish how long they stay

But I don't have a clue how to do this

Or how to manipulate the data

Please help me

you can easily find out the average start age, the average finish age and the average length of stay.

Or are you looking for 'those who start at

try bar charts to plot start times against number of kids,then finish times ditto, then total time in the same way, then you can find out the averages, trends, etc

So I have 5 yrs of data

& I have 65 children

So do I put all the January starts together?

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Well I have a table But my 'input values' are wrong

do it in Excel, not word!

Oh I was (didn't read that bit )

With this much data you will get completely lost unless you are very clear about what you want to find out. I do a lot of data analysis and am very happy to advise, but if you're not clear about what you want to know then you could get lost in this sea of data and we'd never hear from you again

I think I am already lost tbh

I know there is information in there - but I'm not sure what

I think I want to know if we regularly have less children at times of the year & when there are a surge of new children signing up (atm we depend upon my forgettory....I used to have a memory once)

So how about this for a suggestion.
you make a table (in excel) where each row is a month and where each column is a year. Then in each cell you put in the number of children that you had on (for example) the first day of that month. So something like this (ignore the excessive dots):

.......2003..2004..2005..2006
Jan......x......x......x......x
Feb......x......x......x.. ....x
Mar......x......x......x......x

etc, etc

(where x is a number, obviously)

then select the "chart wizard button" and select the "line" option and see what you get.

(apologies if this is not the sort of help you were after )

This is exactly what I need (I think)

Actually it looks like I had a slow start then I have averaged around the same number sort of 10-14 with very few lows and highs

How do I change the x axis from 1-12 to Apr-Mar?

If you type the month names in the first column (leaving the first row blank if you have the year names at the top) and then make sure that this (and the year names) is in the block of cells that you select when you first make the chart then it should do it automatically.

There is also an option to swap rows and columns which sometimes makes things clearer.

Ah I am getting there - so that means I know how many children I have each month - but it doesn't tell me when they start and when they finish & I don't have a table for that

Do you mean what date they start or what time they start?

What form is the relevant data that you have?

I prob won't be online again until later this evening - glad you are making some progress.

What month they start I think

I have like a pretend gantt

I am up to my eyes in exactle this kind of analysis for wor ATM (but with things other than children ).

If I wasn't up to my eyes (literally) in it I would offer to do something for you...if you sre still trying in a coupleof weeks give me a shout and I can either look at creating you a template or somethign for you to copy your data into....you may even be able to use some of the templates I am creating....

Right now my excel mind is 100% focussed on my proper work but happy to help in a couple of weeks.

Thanks that is really kind of you

I have month of start rather than dates as such.....if I don't come up with anything I will let you know in a fortnight or so

The month is fine.

I am visualising the posibilities now (actually it is a welcome relief thinking about children as opposed to work)...

If you have DOB
Start Date
End Date

You could easily churn out the following and chart it in many ways...

Age at start
Age at end
number of children at any point in time
number of children in a particular age range at any point in time
You could plot start dates (or end dates) so you could see the distribution over the 5 years - are there more starts in Jan than Aug for eg.

I really do have a spreadsheet(s) which are almost ready to go for you...I just need to commit the time to strip out a) the top secret info in them and b) the crap you don't need.

And as Love2sleep has said you kind of need a hypothesis, or a clear set of questions to answer....or you will either tie yourself in knots or wander aimlessly through the pile of numbers until you end up completely lost.

I guess I want to see if there is a patten of starting/leaving/length of stay

Starting dates are important because they help us decide when to advertise - so if loads start in Sept but none in July maybe May/June is a good time to advertise

Length of stay is important because it makes us look at whether our attitude/reaction change when a child has been with us fr x amountof time

I hadn't thought to factor in age - but actuually it is the most important info of all - thanks for that

I'll give you a shout when I have some spare brain space......I am more than happy to help if you can wait. As I say I already have something that is essentially ready to do half what you want.

I am hoping to finish my stuff before the weekend, although in reality it could be a couple of weeks if I run beyond the weekend.

No obligation of course.

I will work on making my data accurate and in a format I can use - then when/if you get it finished (& cleaned up) then i can just play about with it

Thank you very much for the offer (& good luck with finishing it)

Sounds like you're sorted!

Not sure if this is of any help or not, but as you are mentioning DOB and Age, thought it may be useful.

I use the following Excel formula to display in a cell, the child's age in Years and Months, from a DOB.

If say cell A1 contained 24/01/2003
B1 formula is:
=CONCATENATE(ROUNDDOWN(DATEDIF(A1,TODAY(),"M")/12,0),"years ",SUM(DATEDIF(A1,TODAY(),"M")-(ROUNDDOWN(DATEDIF(A1,TODAY(),"M")/12,0)*12)),"months old")
Which displays today, "5years, 4months old"

Not sure that is best way of doing that, but it seems to work. Not sure if this is of any use to you, but thought I'd give you the formula should you want to use it.