Performing numerical calculations on text columns?

Hi - I have table that has a number of text columns eg;

Column A Column B

======== ========

Gold Jan

Red Feb

Blue Jan

Red Jan

My Questions are related to the best practice in performing numeric calculations on columns containing text.

1. How would i calculate the totals for the text in Column A (ie. Gold=1, Blue = 1 Red = 2)

2. Once i do the basics total, i then also want to be able calculate averages, means, trends etc.

eg; total number of red in feb is 2

Average number of reds in Jan and Feb is 1.5

Number of reds is trending up....etc

Any thoughts and suggestions on best practice to achieve this and then report all these calculations in one summary page?