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Looking for trends in unrelated related data
I don't know if this is in the exact right spot, but here goes. Let's say that I'm a biologist analyzing litters of puppies: I've got six litters I want to analyze. Each of those litters could have anywhere from five to ten puppies. Each one of those puppies should be identical (for the sake of the thought experiment), but there's variation between each one. Each of those puppies has roughly 30 different areas of the body that I want to analyze. These 30 areas are the exact same spots on all of the puppies across the six litters, and, functionally speaking should be identical to each other of the chosen areas on the same puppy For each one of those areas, I'm investigating aspects of up to each of the following features: skin, fur, and muscle Each one of those features has a given set of characteristics Fur: length, density, color, pattern Skin: color, pattern, elasticity (okay, I know that sounds weird, but I'm grasping at straws for this analogy) Muscle: strength, volume, stamina (lots and lots of straws being grasped) Combining the above results in hundreds of trios of data that I'm trying to analyze: Area - Feature - Characteristic Each trio has its own unique set of allowable values: Area 2 fur length can be between 1 and 2 inches, whereas area 18 fur length can be any length under 4 inches Area 7 skin color can be pink, white, or black, but area 20 skin color can only be brown The Area 12 muscles need to be strong enough to lift 4 lbs, but there is no specification for the strength of the Area 2 muscles Each unique trio of data points has the same allowable range as that same trio of data points across all puppies across all litters Area 6 fur density from puppy 2, litter 1 has the same set of allowable values as Area 6 fur density for puppy 9, litter 10, as does area 12 fur density from puppy 2, litter 1. Despite the fact that the range of allowable values for each trio of data is unique, each area is affected by the same things that affect all other areas; the same is true for Features and Characteristics: Whether or not the puppies are indoor or outdoor dogs affects all fur length The puppy's pedigree affects all puppies' skin color and elasticity How much exercise any one puppy gets affects the strength of all of its muscles Additionally, one trio of data may lend clues to another trio of data Area 10 skin pattern often has an affect on area 10 fur pattern Given all of that: I have thousands of data points that I'm trying to analyze and draw conclusions from, and I'm looking for the best way(s) to do so. Pivot Table seems like it'd be helpful, but, as I move the data around to better understand it, I can't make conditional formatting follow individual cells around that would highlight cells showing bad values based on that data point's area, feature, and characteristic. I'm also poking around with Power Query, or whatever it's called now, but I haven't been able to make anything useful. Suggestions would be incredibly helpful; otherwise I just have to look at all of this data manually.Solved5KViews0likes19Comments