You can use a lookup table although I can't see how you can have both

>=00:00:00 and <=00:00:03

and

>=00:00:03 and <=00:00:06

it should be either

>=00:00:00 and <00:00:03

and

>=00:00:03 and <00:00:06

or

>=00:00:00 and <=00:00:03

and

>00:00:03 and <=00:00:06

assuming you mean less than 3 seconds for the first limit, then use a 2
column table like

0 3db
00:00:03 6db
00:00:06 9db
00:00:09 12db
00:00:12 15db
00:00:15 18db
00:00:18 21db
00:00:21 24db
00:00:24 27db
00:00:27 30db
00:00:30 33db

then simply use

=IF(L4="","",LOOKUP(L4,A1:A11,B1:B11))

where A1:B11 is the table, hardcoded it will be very ugly

=IF(L4="","",LOOKUP(L4,{0;0.0000347222222222222;0.0000694444444444444;0.000104166666666667;0.000138888888888889;0.000173611111111111;0.000208333333333333;0.000243055555555555;0.000277777777777778;0.0003125;0.000347222222222222},{"3db";"6db";"9db";"12db";"15db";"18db";"21db";"24db";"27db";"30db";"33db"}))


--

Regards,

Peo Sjoblom

http://nwexcelsolutions.com

-



<michael.leonard@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1143751756.937076.113210@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> Hi All,
>
> I'm a little bit of a noob but I can't seem to find my answer anywhere
> so here it goes.
> I'm in a sleep research lab. One of our experiments has an element
> where we wake the
> person with a tone that increases by 3db every 3 seconds over a total
> of 33 seconds.
>
> So with this data I'm trying to take a time variable form one column
> and translate it into a categorical value in another.
>
> Let me illustrate:
> J4 is the clock time that we start the tone
> K4 is the clock time that it wakes the person
> L4 in the elapsed time it took to wake the person
> (all of these work great, very basic stuff)
> M4 is the category that L4 falls into based on elapsed time
>
> so if L4 is >=00:00:00 and <=00:00:03, M4 should = "3db"
> or
> if L4 is >=00:00:03 and <=00:00:06, M4 should = "6db"
>
> and so on through a total of 11 ranged conditions 3db-33db.
>
> Thing is you can only nest 7 "IF" statements. So that's out.
>
> Any help would be great, I am very much stuck.
>