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.

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

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

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.

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

• Read / write 1 cell

• Read / write 2 dimension arrays
• Read 3 dimension arrays / 4 dimension arrays
• Write 3 dimension arrays / 4 dimension arrays

• Write / Read 3D array without tuplesets

• Read set
• Write set
• Read tuple set
• R1C1 Excel format
• Read 2D array from Excel
• Read 2D array generic from Excel through prepare and invoke
• Read array of sets
• Read without SheetRead (useful for MacOs and Linux)
• Read 3D indirect

• Variable SheetRead
• Traveling salesman with Excel

• Lost baggage from Model Building

• Read / write huge xls files
• Parse all strings from a spreadsheet

And from Making optimization simple

• zoo example

• CSV files

• How to call OPL from Excel ?

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

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.

PS: Low Barrier to Entry to optimization