How to COUNT a specific result?

[Wildy71]

Hi, I have a student database that has an achievement level for each student. Achievement is either Level:1,2,3,4. I want to create a school summary layout that provides the number of students who recieved Level 1, level 2, etc. I know that you can COUNT the total number of records for a field, but how do you count how many Level 1's are entered, how many level 2's etc.? Or maybe Count has nothing to do with it?

Thanks for your help.

[BobWeaver]

Several ways of doing it, but since you have a summary layout the simplest is to simply add a summary field that is the count of Achievement Level (or any field for that matter). Just put the summary field in the sub-summary part of the layout. This will have to be a sub-summary by Achievement Level, and you will have to sort by Achievement Level.

[kennedy]

Actually, if you know how to count the total number of records, you can use exactly that summary field to get what you want...

In that summary layout, you create a subsummary part that has the Achievement Level as its break field. Then put the summary field that is a count of the records into that part. Sort by achievement level. Voila... you will get one instance of the subsummary layout part for each achievement level and the count in each of those parts will be of just the records with that same achievement level.

HTH.

[Wildy71]

Okay,

feeling a bit dumb right now...maybe when I used the word "summary" I inadvertantly implied that I'd done something more sophisticated than I had. I currently have a STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT PAGE where, for each student, I enter their achievement level in the field ACHIEVLEVELMATH, or ACHEIVENTLEVELENGLISH, etc, etc. Now I want to be able to create another layout that will show how many students were at Level 1 in math, level 2 in math, level 3 etc. etc.

I'm a fairly new user of Filemaker and am sort of picking up features / functions etc as I go...(ie. dumb it down if possible!:

Thanks,

Paul

[CobaltSky]

Hi Paul,

The previous posts in response to your initial query were working on the assumption that you wanted to produce a summary report of found records. However I am guessing that you may prefer a summary screen of the results, which places the overview of gradings onto a single screen, and works dynamically rather than being dependent on data sorting etc.

That being the case, I suggest you create a set of fields (often called 'flag' fields), to break out the information into its elements first, so that they can be individually summed 'live' in your database.

To do this, create a set of calculating fields with formulae along the lines of:

Case(Subject - "English" and AchievementLevel = "Level1", 1)

You will need one of these calculations to correspond to each factor/combination you want to summarise.

Once the calculating 'flag' fields are in place, you should then create a set of corresponding summary fields which are each defined as the 'Total' of the corresponding calculation. To do this, select the field type 'Summary' when creating the fields, and then choose total and the corresponding field in the summary options dialog that follows.

The calculation fields need not appear on any layouts - they will operate in the background providing the 'engine room' for your summary fields.

The summary fields should be placed in an appropriate configuration on your 'Achievement Summary' layout/screen. Note that the data summary will always relate only to the found set. If you want to summarise achievement levels for a sub-set of students, you will be able to do so by performing a 'find' to extract the relevant group of students, then switch to the Achievement Summary layout to view the summary of achievement levels for the found set sub-group.

Hope the above gives you something to work with.

[Wildy71]

Hey, Whaddya know! That works like a charm!

Thanks a lot Ray.

Paul