Sometimes the observations for a variable are not immediately suitable for analysis and instead need to be transformed using a mathematical function. Transformations are often used to normalise the distribution of a variable, but can be used to change the scale, offset the observations or even recode groups.
Excel cell formulas and custom VBA functions can be used to transform or calculate the data for a variable. Transformed and calculated data is treated just like any other variable as far as measurement scale and observation precision are concerned.
Excel functions most commonly used for transformations are:
To transform the observations of a variable in a list dataset:
