Hi Steve, no negative numbers. Actually the first thing I do is delete all records less than or equal to 0 and all numbers greater than the Target to help narrow the field. -Marvin

>Marvin,
>
>Are there any negative numbers in the list?
>
>>Jay, Most of the discussion is frankly above my head. I've run the program on several small datasets with perfect results in just seconds. Now I'm running it on a real dataset. I've created a test target that I know is valid. My real dataset has 70 numbers. The time to calculate has increased exponentially as it should. the program is running right now and already I'm up to 3,000,000 iterations of the main loop. I'm no statistician but I think something has gone arwy. I'll let it keep running for the fun of it. Thanks for all of your help...Marvin
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