Coding Help (only Ideas)

Lo all, Just need some general ideas on how to code something.
Right in the application im making I need to find the lowest 'paid' 20% of people in a certain group. i.e if there are 100 people in group 1 then 20 people (same as 20%) who are paid the lowest are in Band A, then the 20.1% - 39% of the lowest paid are in Band B.
The way how I thought of doing it would be to say sort through every person in the array and if they are in group 1 then add their serial/id number to another array, once the loop has found everyone in group 1 then sort that array in range of lowest to highest. Then..... lol divide the ubound of the array which is now sorted by 100 to get how many people per %. Mulitply that by 20 to get the 0 to 20% point on the array. next multiply the 1st number by 39 then add the 20% number as the starting point then the 39% as end point which gives then the 20% - 39% number lol.

Right thats how I though initially of doing it, any fast way people know of??

this may help:
it is code to sort an array it works very fast

so you could dump into the array, pass the arry in and sort it...

then like you said divide the ubound to find the ranges for each percent

VB Code:

Private Sub QuickSort(C() As String, ByVal First As Long, ByVal Last As Long)
    Dim Low As Long, High As Long
    Dim MidValue As String
    
    Low = First
    High = Last
    MidValue = C((First + Last) \ 2)
    
    Do
    While C(Low) < MidValue
    Low = Low + 1
    Wend
    
    While C(High) > MidValue
    High = High - 1
    Wend
    
    If Low <= High Then
        Swap C(Low), C(High)
        Low = Low + 1
        High = High - 1
    End If
Loop While Low <= High
 
If First < High Then QuickSort C, First, High
If Low < Last Then QuickSort C, Low, Last
End Sub
 
Private Sub Swap(ByRef A As String, ByRef B As String)
    Dim T As String
    
    T = A
    A = B
    B = T
End Sub

You could do this in Excel in less time than it took to type your question.

Anyway, get your data in an array. Sort the array on the income column, lo to hi.

For however many people you have in the array, N, each band B will be N * .20, or N / 5.

The first B entries in the sorted array are the lowest band. The next B entries are the next band. etc.

Example: N = 155, B = 31
Sorted array = A(i) or A(c,i) for multiple columns.
Band 1 = A(0) thru A(B-1) 'Note that VB defaults to base 0 arrays.
Band 2 = A(B) thru A(B+B-1)

And so on.

Does that help, or do you need to discuss the actual sorting process?