Hi,

I have a four fields that were defined by subjects checking off answers
on a value list. Subjects could check European, Asian, and/or Russian
for the ancestry of each of their grandparents.
I want to make an index which says what percentage of each ethnicity
someone is. So if someone has 3 asian grandparents, I would calculate 3
for another field called Asian. Thanks to a superfast response to my
last question, I found that the PatternCount function almost gets me
what I need.
If I say "patterncount( Grandparent1 & Grandparent2 & Grandparent3 &
Grandparent4, Asian)", I will get 3. I could make three fields,
European, Asian, and Russian that each calculate the percentage of the
relevant ethnicity in a similar manner. (For some reason the If
function does not seem to work on this text field derived from a value
list).

My problem is if someone has a multiracial ancestor. If, for example
they have 3 asian grandparents and one who is asian-russian, I would
want a value of 3.5 returned.

Anyone know how to do this?

Thanks,
Dan

In article <1131421774.735390.216190 (AT) g47g2000cwa (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
dtae (AT) yahoo (DOT) com says...
Pretty much the way you are doing it now; except that you need to deal
with the possibility of fractional ratios within each field.

So you need the total number of values in each field as well to divide
by:

so your Asian field would be:

patterncount(Grandparent1, "Asian")/valuecount(Grandparent1)+
patterncount(Grandparent2, "Asian")/valuecount(Grandparent2)+
patterncount(Grandparetn3, "Asian")/valuecount(Grandparent3)+
patterncount(Grandparent4, "Asian")/valuecount(Grandparent4)

so grandparents 1..4 =
{Asian},{Asian}, {Asian}, {Asian, Russian}
it will evaluate to:

1/1 + 1/1 + 1/1 + 1/2 = 3.5

and your russian field, on the above data:

0/1 + 0/1 + 0/1 + 1/2 = 0.5

-best regards,
Dave

Dave, Much thanks for the quick reply.

ValueCount looks like the perfect solution, except I am using Pro 5.5,
which does not seem to have that function yet. Does anyone know of a
reasonable way of accomplishing the same thing with 5.5?

Otherwise perhaps I will upgrade to 7 (I have a copy laying around, but
have been refraining from the upgrade because collaborators I work with
don't have 7 and the files don't seem to be backward compatible).

I got my answer in anothr post:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp....2c6a05dcedae0b

Just use patterncount to count the number of carriage returns + 1