Data analysis program

The Savior

So last year, my buddy gave all of his friends a homework assignment: make a list of your 50 favorite movies of all time. People are finally starting to finish their lists, and we'd like to have some way to compile some info about them (stuff like what genre is the most represented, graphs showing the most popular years, and so on) for both individual people and for the group as a whole. I know that this can be done in Excel, but I'm not too familiar with it, and before I embark on learning the ins and outs of it I'd like to be confident that there isn't a program out there that does what I'm trying to do, but better. Does anyone have any suggestions, or maybe a advise on how to organize an Excel sheet to do this?

P.S. - I forgot, I have easiest access to Macs, though Windows software isn't out of the question.

Seguer

A database would work well here. Remember though that you'll have to input all the extra info (genre, year, etc) into whatever solution you end up using - unless it is specific to movies and can aggregate that stuff by itself (which would be awesome).

Otherwise, for Excel, if you pasted everything vertically and had the different columns setup as the extra info, it would be like a database and you can just run graphs on the data to get certain things out of it.

Not sure how you'd accomplish some things (genre most represented) off the top of my head (unless it's just a sum/total/count sort of thing).

Someone else will probably have more to add.

The Savior

I don't mind having to input all the info, especially if I can simply copy/paste movies that are common to multiple lists.

embrik

Well, if you didn't want to go through the trouble of setting up a spreadsheet or database, you could use something like DVD Profiler. I use it to keep track of my DVD collection. Of course, to use the coolest features (like the automatic graphing) for more than 50 movies, you'll have to register it ($30, I think).
It will graph movies by genre, studio, MPAA rating (& other countries ratings), Production years by year or decade, personal review, etc.

However, if you need something to "hand in", a database or spreadsheet would be much better, as the only thing you can do with the graphs is view and print them.

Fantasma

You will be better served using Excel, because learning to program (Visual Basic for example) for just this project makes no sense. Everything you need is there in Excel.