My brain's math unit has hung so I am hoping one of you has a working
version.

It is a long story so please accept that I must do what I outline below.

Sporting event in which competitors must perform 6 exercises.  
Normally a start order is drawn and then each performs their first
exercise in start order and then their second, and so on.
A simple index on ("Round", "StartOrder") does the business .. and has
done so since time immemorial.

But now the International Federation has added a Team event in which
each team of 2 members performs 6 exercises, with each team member
doing 3 alternately.  So what?  Well in spite of me buying the event
designer a drink and explaining my difficulty, he was unmoved (or just
plain awkward!) and this event type has to run with each of the 2
divers in a team performing one after the other - messing up the nice
and simple running order.

So it has to go: Start1 exercise1 (ie, round1), Start1 round2, Start2
round1, Start2 round2, .. until final team.. then back to Start1
round3, Start1 round4, ....

I have managed to derive the following expression to calculate the
running order using the "StartOrder", "Round" and number of "Teams",
but I can't believe it has to be so complicated.  I have added a few
extra ()s to clarify it a little!

(2 * "StartOrder" + (("Round"-1) MOD 2) - 1) + (((("Round" + 1) DIV 2)
-1) * 2 * "Teams")

You will see it is in two parts which are then added:

The first expression generates the base RunOrder offset for each team,
based on StartOrder
  (2 * "StartOrder" + (("Round"-1) MOD 2) - 1)

The second expression generates the offset for each pair of rounds,
based on the number of teams.
  (((("Round" + 1) DIV 2) -1) * 2 * "Teams)

Any suggestions?

I have posted a spreadsheet for a 4-team event in the binaries in case
you need/want to test/experiment.  Excel does not have DIV so I had to
use TRUNC in it.

Malcolm
<How do you reboot a brain's math unit?>

Malcolm,

<< Any suggestions? >>

Are you simply concerned with the complexity ?  I don't think it's
particulary complex, and certainly won't be an issue for a generated column.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim Young [Elevate Software] wrote:

>
> Are you simply concerned with the complexity ?  I don't think it's
> particulary complex, and certainly won't be an issue for a generated
> column.

Hi Tim

Not concerned about performance as the data set will never be large.
It seems to work fine but I wondered if anyone could look at me
pityingly and say .. but you only have to ...   

Malcolm

Malcom,

>Well in spite of me buying the event
designer a drink and explaining my difficulty, he was unmoved (or just
plain awkward!) and this event type has to run with each of the 2
divers in a team performing one after the other - messing up the nice
and simple running order.<

Some advice.

In reply to the client's "simple" request, I'd counter with:

"Sure it's possible. It all depends on how much time and money *we* have to contribute to the solution".

If he doesn't have the money, then it can't be that important to him after all, and coincidentally I don't have the time.
Far too many clients ask for the moon and only have bus fare as payment. It is better to determine this at the outset before writing any code.

Just my 2 cents.

Barry

Barry wrote:

>
> "Sure it's possible. It all depends on how much time and money we
> have to contribute to the solution".
>

Sadly it is a freeware app and while all major championships now use
software such as mine, the Federation's legislators were brought up in
the days of paper and pencil management systems so they don't 'get' the
'systems' point of view.  Clearly the guy's price was higher than a
single beer!

Malcolm