Final Friday Fix: April 2021 Challenge

On the final Friday of each month, we are going to set an Excel / Power BI challenge for you to puzzle over so that you can get your “Excel fix”.  Challenge your office colleagues to see who can solve the puzzle quickest.  There are no prizes at this stage: you are playing for bragging rights only!

This month, we want to check if a pair of values are of the same category. 

The Challenge

Excel possess a challenge when it comes to categorical data.  To identify commonality in different values within different categories can somewhat be difficult on occasion.  For instance, I came across a dataset that shows which social media channels certain staff members use:

Imagine that this data set goes on to for 1,000 rows.  Using this data set as a proxy, how hard it is to identify if a pair of users have a common social media channel?

The challenge is “simply” this: can you write a formula to potentially create a list of pairs that use a common social media channel.  This must be done in one cell.  We even supply a starter file for you!

Sounds easy?  Then why not have a go?  We’ll publish one solution in Monday’s blog.  Have a great weekend in the meantime!