Hello Diamond Searchers!
I''ve been shopping for a diamond... specifically an oval that will take the center position in a three stone ring. I found all of the different critiera used to determine a good stone, you all know, C,C,C, depth, table, symmetry, polish, size and price. I was dumbfounded looking at charts and tables with a billion stones listed.
What to do?
Well. I had to fall back on data processing. I went to a wholesaler''s site and entered my criteria: oval cut, .75 to .99 carats, VVS to SI1 clarity and let it rip. Then I got the printable version of the table and copied it to my clipboard. Then opened it in Word... with a little judicious use of search and replace to get the formating right.. then changed the text to table. Now, off to Excel.
In Excel I had to do a lot of massaging of the numbers as the data came over in text. So I had to write a few equations and parse some of the data (no joy). Then I assigned numerical values to qualities.. so VVS2=4 VS1=3 VS2=2 SI1=1 and for color D=4 E=3 F=2 G=1 and so on with Polish & Symmetry. To match the ideal proportions for depth & table and length & width I had to do some more number crunching.
In the end I came up with a total score for the stone and whether or not it came within the AGA recommendations for ideal cut. Matching this score and "3 OKs" with the price per carat it made selecting a stone much easier.
I would recommend that, if your confused with the flurry of data out there, you put that computer of yours to work making the choosing of a diamond much easier.
Good Luck,
Mike

I''ve been shopping for a diamond... specifically an oval that will take the center position in a three stone ring. I found all of the different critiera used to determine a good stone, you all know, C,C,C, depth, table, symmetry, polish, size and price. I was dumbfounded looking at charts and tables with a billion stones listed.
What to do?
Well. I had to fall back on data processing. I went to a wholesaler''s site and entered my criteria: oval cut, .75 to .99 carats, VVS to SI1 clarity and let it rip. Then I got the printable version of the table and copied it to my clipboard. Then opened it in Word... with a little judicious use of search and replace to get the formating right.. then changed the text to table. Now, off to Excel.
In Excel I had to do a lot of massaging of the numbers as the data came over in text. So I had to write a few equations and parse some of the data (no joy). Then I assigned numerical values to qualities.. so VVS2=4 VS1=3 VS2=2 SI1=1 and for color D=4 E=3 F=2 G=1 and so on with Polish & Symmetry. To match the ideal proportions for depth & table and length & width I had to do some more number crunching.
In the end I came up with a total score for the stone and whether or not it came within the AGA recommendations for ideal cut. Matching this score and "3 OKs" with the price per carat it made selecting a stone much easier.
I would recommend that, if your confused with the flurry of data out there, you put that computer of yours to work making the choosing of a diamond much easier.
Good Luck,
Mike
