Choose Your New Car - IF Then, Conditions, Weighted Totals

Question

Here is my problem:
A person really wants a new car. I have 4 cars that are very similar to one another, and the person really likes all four based on appearance only.  I figure that if I ask enough distinguishing yes and no questions, I can narrow it down to one car out of the four that would be best suited for the person and I can be certain they would be happy with it because of the information they provided. 
So I want to weight each yes/no question (0-4) and create a condition or if-then (forgive me for my numbers illiteracy) so that if they answer yes to question #1 for example, then that weighted number (we will say 3 for this example) which happens to be associated with a honda civic (one of the four cars) will go into a cell that keeps a running total for the honda civic. At the end of the questions, based on the way the person answered, the highest total number would suggest one of the four cars would be best suited for him.
So, I am looking for a way to create a formula to satisfy what I am hoping to do. Can anyone help?  Below is what I thought it might look like.  Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi e,
Interesting! I assume the weightings are your knowledge and opinion, not the customer's wish-list. If so, instead of entering y (4) for Honda Civic airbags, you could just enter 4 (I assume that it gets a 4 because it has side air bags, and you consider those air bags to be reliable). I assume the Chevy Malibu has no side air bags, and so gets 0. Then you have just numbers that are easier to deal with.
How about this for the Features Table (I renamed this table Features in the left sidebar and added a label in cell A1):
Features
side air bags
spoiler
kid friendly
TRUE
FALSE
TRUE
Honda Civic
4
0
0
Chevy Malibu
0
1
0
Hyundai Elantra
0
0
2
Kia Forte Koup
3
0
0
There are check boxes in Row 2 under each feature (they show here as TRUE/FALSE). Tick means yes, it is important to the customer. No tick means no, it is not important to the customer.
You can insert check boxes with Inspector > Cells, click on Cell Format to choose tick boxes.
Add another table and rename it Outcome. The Outcome Table uses IF so that a feature only counts IF a checkbox is ticked. enter this in cell B3:
=IF(Features :: B$2 = TRUE,Features :: side air bags Honda Civic,0)
Select and copy down then across to fill to cell D6. Please note that these formulas will only work if you name the Table "Features" otherwise you must use cell references.
Outcome
side air bags
spoiler
kid friendly
Total
Honda Civic
4
0
0
4
Chevy Malibu
0
0
0
0
Hyundai Elantra
0
0
2
2
Kia Forte Koup
3
0
0
3
The Total column uses  =SUM(B3:D3)
Copy down to D6.
I hope this helps.
Ian.