Is it possible to select a subset of rows from a Numbers table?

Question

I know I can use the COUNTIF, SUMIF, AVERAGEIF functions to operate on a subset of rows in a Numbers table based on a condition. What I would like is to be able to use other functions, for example the MAX and MIN functions.
For example, give a table like this:
A
B
1
Fred
20
2
George
30
3
Fred
25
4
Bob
15
5
Bob
20
6
Fred
10
7
George
9
8
George
25
9
Fred
12
10
Bob
13
What I want could be expressed as =MAX( SELECTIF(A1:A10, "=Fred", B1:B10) )
Where the SELECTIF function would return a range containing B1,B3, B6 and B9 that could be operated on by the MAX function.

Answer 1

There is no single function to do what you want.  Here is a way you can achive your goal:
This is a down-and -dirty solution because I am not sure how you want to use the informtion (so I kept it all in one table):
E1=IFERROR(MATCH($D$1, B, 0), "")
F1=IFERROR(VLOOKUP(E1-1,$A$2:$C$11, 3), "")
E2=IFERROR(E1+MATCH($D$1, INDIRECT("B"&E1+1&":B"&ROWS(Table 11)), 0), "")
F2=IFERROR(VLOOKUP(E2-1,$A$2:$C$11, 3), "")
select E2 and F2, then fill down
Now find the max:
D2=MAX(F)