Microsoft has released the free Solver extension for Office 2011.
The ‘what-if analysis tool “on steroids”’ allows Excel users to make calculations — such as profit maximisation and risk minimisation — by automatically adjusting multiple input cells.
The new version offers functional parity — and full compatibility — with the latest Windows version, despite the fact that it is based on OS X technologies: AppleScript and XCode.
For the maths savvy, it now includes both faster linear programming, mixed-integer programming, and nonlinear optimisation solving methods, and also an Evolutionary solving method, based on genetic algorithms.
It also features multi-start methods for global optimisation and a new ‘all different’ constraint that can be used, for example, to model the classic Traveling Salesman Problem.
Solver is a free download from solver.com/mac.
