Command Overview

The stratify command is used to stratify a population into ranges. The command supports four sources of data for testing:

1. Data file in tab separated value format
2. WorkSheet
3. Selected range within a worksheet
4. Database (e.g. MS-Access, MySQL, etc)

Syntax

The command is entered on the command line as the command name ("stratify", or just "st") followed by one or more command parameters. Each command parameter consists of an argument name, immediately followed by an equal sign ("=") and then immediately followed by a value. The value may be enclosed with quotation marks, and must be enclosed by quotation marks if the value consists of any embedded spaces.

An example of a command parameter to specify that the file name to be processed is test.txt is entered as "file=test.txt" (without the quotations). Each argument on the command line must consist of only valid parameter names. If a required parameter name is missing, then the command line will be colored yellow, an error message will be displayed on the Excel status bar and an audible tone will be sounded.

The following is a listing of all parameter values for the stratify command:

An example

The command to be perform a stratification on the file named \test\invoice\tran.txt using the amount column named "Paid Amount" and stratify according to bins 5, 10 , 20 50 100, 200 500 ", storing the results on the worksheet named "Data Stratification " is as follows:

stratify file=\test\invoice\tran.txt col="Paid Amount " strata="5 10 20 50 100 200 500" recap="Data Stratification "

Error checking performed

The contents of the strata specified must meet all of the following criteria:

• each amount must be a valid number
• each number must be separated by at least one space
• the numbers must be in ascending order
• at least two numbers must be specified

If any of these conditions fail, then an error message will be displayed on the status bar an no further processing will be performed. Note that commonly, the stratify command will be issued repeatedly, specifying different strata criteria, until the desired results are obtained.

Output from the processing will include a stratified listing of the population values, counts, percentages and cumulative percentages..

An example of the command bar is shown below:

An example of the stratification report:

During processing, a graphic is displayed, an example of which is shown below:

Main Form