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Excel can be used to group times into unequal buckets by utilizing the “Grouping” feature. This feature allows users to create custom groups based on specific criteria, such as time intervals. By setting up different groupings with varying time intervals, users can group times into unequal buckets. This is particularly useful when dealing with large datasets that have a mix of short and long time intervals, as it allows for more accurate and meaningful analysis. Additionally, Excel also has the ability to automatically assign data to the appropriate group based on its time value, making the process more efficient and error-free.
You can use the following basic syntax in Excel to group times into unequal buckets:
=IF(B2<=TIMEVALUE("10:00:00 AM"),"12AM-10AM",IF(B2<=TIMEVALUE("1:00:00 PM"),"10AM-1PM","1PM-12AM"))
This particular formula looks at the time in cell B2 and returns the following values:
- 12AM-10AM if the time value in cell B2 is less than or equal to 10AM.
- Else, 10AM-1PM if the time value in cell B2 is less than or equal to 1PM.
- Else, 1PM-12PM
Note that this particular formula creates three distinct time buckets, but you can use as many nested IF functions as you’d like to create even more time buckets.
The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.
Example: How to Group Times into Unequal Buckets in Excel
Suppose we have the following dataset in Excel that shows the times when various employees started working their shift on a particular day:
Suppose we would like to classify each start time into one of the following time buckets:
- 12AM-10AM
- 10AM-1PM
- 1PM-12AM
We can type the following formula into cell C2 to do so:
=IF(B2<=TIMEVALUE("10:00:00 AM"),"12AM-10AM",IF(B2<=TIMEVALUE("1:00:00 PM"),"10AM-1PM","1PM-12AM"))
We can then click and drag this formula down to each remaining cell in column C:
Column C now shows the time bucket in which each employee started their shift.
For example:
- Employee A001 started working at 12:33 AM so they fell into time bucket 12AM-10AM.
- Employee A006 started working at 11:34 AM so they fell into time bucket 12AM-10AM.
- Employee A008 started working at 3:19 PM so they fell into time bucket 1PM-12AM.
And so on.
Additional Resources
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Excel: