Database problem to be solved... Please help!

[Nick M.]

I'm trying to show that everyone is somehow connected at my school.

(Jimmy is friends with Timmy. Timmy is brother to Janie. Janie played soccer
with Billy.)

That kind of thing, except on a large scale.

I have all the data, but it's all out of order so no one can make out the
connections. My problem is that I want to have excel automatically match up
all the connections. I am somewhat experienced with excel, but am new to
databases. I don't even know if that's what I should be using.

Does anyone know how I can solve this problem?

Even automatically pairing names would be great.

Any help or ideas would be appreciated! Thanks!!

 

[Reeza]

I'm trying to show that everyone is somehow connected at my school.

(Jimmy is friends with Timmy. Timmy is brother to Janie. Janie played soccer
with Billy.)

That kind of thing, except on a large scale.

I have all the data, but it's all out of order so no one can make out the
connections. My problem is that I want to have excel automatically match up
all the connections. I am somewhat experienced with excel, but am new to
databases. I don't even know if that's what I should be using.

Does anyone know how I can solve this problem?

Even automatically pairing names would be great.

Any help or ideas would be appreciated! Thanks!!

Probably wouldn't use Excel for that.


My idea would be to create distances between people.
If I know you directly then that's a 1
If someone knows someone and you them at a distance of 2.
and recursively fill it out.

It'll help you see the connections better, and maybe search for a tree
algorithm to see if everyone's connected?
How would you define that anyways? If you can get from one person to
any other within x amount of people?

Good luck!

 

[Herbert Seidenberg]

This uses Pivot Table and List:
http://www.savefile.com/files/1784190