Simplify Your Teaching of Optimization, Simulation, and More with Analytic Solver Platform for Education

Instructors:  Analytic Solver Platform for Education, a special version of Frontline Systems’ market-leading, all-in-one solution Analytic Solver Platform software for Microsoft Excel, can simplify your life, save classroom time, and enrich your students' experience with predictive and prescriptive analytics:  data exploration, visualization and data mining, optimization, simulation and risk analysis, decision tree, and sensitivity analysis.    For pricing details, click Using Analytic Solver Platform for Education in the ClassroomNOTE: You must be logged in as a qualified academic user to view this page.  Call us at 775-831-0300 x101 or x103 to add this feature to your user account.  More questions?  Read our FAQ for answers or contact us anytime at (888) 831-0333 (U.S. and Canada), 775-831-0300, or academic@solver.com

Breakthrough Integrated Capabilities for Teaching

Analytic Solver Platform for Education -- a superset of Risk Solver Platform for Education -- includes:

  • Full Excel Solver compatibility, for worksheet models and VBA macros; the classic Solver Parameters dialog and Analytic Solver Platform’s new Ribbon and Task Pane are completely interoperable.
  • Full Excel 2016, Excel 2013, Excel 2010 and Excel 2007 compatibility, in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
  • All the capabilities of XLMiner, Frontline's powerful software for data exploration and visualization, forecasting and data mining -- with access to external SQL and PowerPivot databases.
  • All the capabilities of Risk Solver Pro, Frontline’s powerful product for Monte Carlo simulation and risk analysis, matching or exceeding the capabilities of products like Crystal Ball and @RISK.
  • All the power of Premium Solver Platform, a large superset of Premium Solver and by far the most powerful spreadsheet optimizer, with its PSI interpreter for model analysis and five built-in Solver Engines for linear, quadratic, SOCP, mixed-integer, nonlinear, non-smooth and global optimization.
  • Ability to solve optimization models with uncertainty and recourse decisions, using simulation optimization, stochastic programming, robust optimization, and stochastic decomposition.
  • New integrated sensitivity analysis and decision tree capabilities, developed in cooperation with Prof. Chris Albright (SolverTable), Profs. Stephen Powell and Ken Baker (Sensitivity Toolkit), and Prof. Mike Middleton (TreePlan).
  • A special version of the Gurobi Solver – the ultra-high-performance linear mixed-integer optimizer created by the respected computational scientists at Gurobi Optimization.

Tech Support and Textbook Support to Simplify Your Life

Frontline Systems offers direct technical support for you when you're teaching with the software, for your school's IT staff, and for your students during installation.  Let us handle the mechanics of software, so you can concentrate on teaching modeling concepts.  It's all included ... in our super-bargain price.

Strong textbook support is available for your current course, and more is on the way. You can use:

We anticipate further support for Analytic Solver Platform for Education in future editions of these and other popular textbooks.  And of course, every model you have for the Excel Solver or Premium Solver Pro will work as-is in Analytic Solver Platform for Education.  Just open the workbook and solve!

Reasonable Education Version Problem Size Limits

Analytic Solver Platform for Education has the following limits on capacity and performance:

  • Tables in external databases or PowerPivot are limited to 1,000,000 rows
  • Up to 65,000 rows and 100 columns in a sample or partition for data mining
  • Up to 10,000 rows for the training set used in classification, prediction, or time series analysis
  • Certain other limits affecting data reduction, clustering, association rules, and Naive Bayes
  • Up to 200 decision variables (continuous, semi-continuous, integer or binary) for optimization
  • Up to 100 constraints, plus bounds on the variables for nonlinear and non-smooth optimization
  • Up to 50 uncertain variables and 25 uncertain functions for Monte Carlo simulation
  • Up to 10 simulations and 10,000 Monte Carlo trials per simulation
  • Maximum one processor core used by Analytic Solver Platform’s many parallelized algorithms
  • Plug-in large-scale Solver Engines other than the special Gurobi Solver are not supported
  • Background ‘watermarks’ that say “Not for commercial use” appear on all charts

All problem size limits are controlled through a license code.  If you have specific models that exceed the limits, contact us for a special license code that can raise the limits for a temporary period.

Further Information and Free Evaluation Licenses

For further information on Analytic Solver Platform for Education, contact us at (888) 831-0333 (U.S. and Canada), 775-831-0300, or academic@solver.com.  We'll be pleased to provide free evaluation licenses to faculty members considering adoption of the software.  We can help you with conversion of simulation models you might have created with other software to work with Analytic Solver Platform (it's very straightforward).  Read our FAQ for answers to some very common questions.

Analytic Solver Platform, Risk Solver Platform, Risk Solver and Premium Solver are trademarks of Frontline Systems, Inc.  Gurobi is a trademark of Gurobi Optimization, Inc.  Crystal Ball is a trademark of Oracle Corp.  @RISK is a trademark of Palisade Corp.  CPLEX is a trademark of IBM Corp.