Excel, Rocket science and optimization
From https://twitter.com/KirkDBorne/status/1375862952381808641?s=20

Excel, Rocket science and optimization

I saw this nice curve many times and last time was in a tweet by Kirk Borne . This curve tells a very simple story: As a child and then a student we learn maths that get more and more complex as we get older and then as soon we get a job we go back to very trivial maths, we just use spreadsheets.

I do not agree and this story is much too simple.

I value making life easier for users, hiding complexity and making complex looks simple.

In "Optimization : simply do more with less, zoo, buses and kids", I tried to explain with simple words what optimization is. And OPL is a great tool to make CPLEX less complex, and even very simple.

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The IBM Research Ponder This challenge March 2021 was about Mars and can be seen as Rocket science.

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And this puzzle can be simply solved with 4 lines in OPL CPLEX and an Excel spreadsheet.

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Excel, Rocket science and optimization!

In "Plug-in optimization : the last mile", I drew an implicit parallel : In supply chain the last mile looks easy but is often quite expensive. Same with optimization sometimes : reaching the user can be difficult and plugging optimization on top of anything the user already has is simpler. This something can be SAP, Planning Analytics or many tools. It can also be Excel that is the most widespread spreadsheet.

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Now is the time for very easy examples on how to add optimization on top of Excel with OPL CPLEX.

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And from Making optimization simple

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  • How to call OPL from Excel ?

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And it's also possible to import Excel files into Cloudpak for Data and then use CPLEX / Decision optimization

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As a conclusion, I encourage IBM Planning Analytics users to have a look at what optimization can bring but short term all Microsoft Excel users can add some optimization to their current process.

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PS: Low Barrier to Entry to optimization

Alex always excels at explaining how and why just because a technology has a rich mathematical foundation doesn't mean it's difficult to implement or doesn't address simple, practical problems.

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