Can I do this test in Excel?

[Routus]

Hi all

I have several spreadsheets with data relating to horse races; the sheets vary in size from a few columns to several hundred columns, and I want to be able to analyse the columns to find the ones that have the most impact on, or relevance to, the result.

Is this something I can do within Excel? Any advice greatly appreciated.

Thanks in anticipation

Paul

 

[Gerald Higgins]

Hi, welcome to the board.

Your request is pretty vague - it basically boils down to "Can I do some analysis using Excel?" to which the answer is almost certainly "yes".

But without knowing what kind of analysis you want to do, or what kind of data you have, or what results you want, it's difficult to say any more than that.

 

[Routus]

Hi Gerald, and thanks for your reply.

The data is all numeric, and covers performance figures for horses, trainers, Jockeys and even owners. I want to look at the complete data for a race and make an assessment of which columns have the most relevance to the outcome. One of the sheets I use has well over 400 columns, and clearly a lot of that information will be having little or no direct bearing on the result. I need to find some form of analysis to give me an indication of which columns are most relevant, so that I can get rid of the irrelevant stuff and look at finding patterns in the relevant data.

Thanks for your interest.

Paul