Frontline Optimization and Simulation Solvers in Education

Over the past ten years, our Excel Solvers have become the most popular software used to teach students about optimization in MBA and undergraduate business programs.  We've worked closely with a number of textbook authors and publishers to create the best possible tools for teaching your students.

New Risk Solver Platform for Education

Risk Solver Platform for Education, launched in June 2009 and updated several times since then, including support for 32-bit and 64-bit Excel 2010, is a special version of our 'super-product' Risk Solver Platform, with some problem size and speed limitations, that is licensed only for educational use. Risk Solver Platform for Education has integrated capabilities for optimization, simulation, decision analysis and more.

Like Risk Solver Platform, the Education version can operate in "full Risk Solver Platform mode," or it can operate in any of four "subset modes."  Premium Solver for Education is available as the smallest of the four subsets -- but full Risk Solver Platform for Education is available for the same price!  This new product can simplify teaching, save classroom time, and relieve budget pressures -- and thanks to our OEM work for Microsoft, it will carry you through the transition to Excel 2010

The new 6th Edition of Cliff Ragsdale’s textbook Spreadsheet Modeling and Decision Analysis and the new 3rd Edition of Powell & Baker’s book Management Science: The Art of Modeling with Spreadsheets use Risk Solver Platform throughout.

Spreadsheet Modeling      Management Science

For you, both textbooks come with teaching aids such as PowerPoint slides and videos, answers to exercises and more. For your students, Frontline grants them a free semester-length license to use the software with these textbooks.

Premium Solver for Education

Premium Solver for Education is a special version of our Premium Solver for Excel, with problem size and speed limitations, that is licensed only for educational use.  It is bundled with the textbooks below; each textbook copy includes a single user license to the software for educational use only. Most textbooks include the software on CD, but the newest books include links to www.solver.com/student to download the software.

We also support free use of Premium Solver for Education with custom-published books based on the titles below, and in certain other instructional situations. If you're teaching a course and you'd like to use Premium Solver for Education, contact us for a free Course Code, and free access to priority technical support for you as an instructor. Our aim is to make learning easier for you and for your students.

The following textbooks include Premium Solver for Education.  For more information and links to Amazon.com for some of these books, visit our Recommended Books page for Management Science and Operations Research.

  • Management Science: The Art of Modeling with Spreadsheets, 2nd Edition Excel 2007 Update, by Powell and Baker
  • Spreadsheet Modeling and Decision Analysis: A Practical Introduction to Management Science, 5th Edition by Ragsdale
  • Practical Management Science, 3rd Edition by Winston and Albright
  • VBA for Modelers: Developing Decision Support Systems Using Microsoft Excel, 2nd Edition by Albright
  • Optimization Modeling with Spreadsheets by Baker 
  • Management Science and Decision Technology by Camm and Evans
  • Decision Modeling with Microsoft Excel, 6th Edition by Moore, Weatherford et al
  • Introduction to Management Science: Quantitative Approaches to Decision Making, 10th Edition by Anderson, Sweeney and Williams
  • Operations Research: Applications and Algorithms, 4th Edition by Winston
  • Introduction to Mathematical Programming: Applications and Algorithms, 4th Edition by Winston
  • Introduction to Operations Research, 7th Edition by Hillier and Lieberman
  • Introduction to Management Science: A Modeling and Case Studies Approach with Spreadsheets, by Hillier, Hillier and Lieberman
  • The Science of Decision-Making: A Problem-Based Approach Using Excel, by Denardo
  • Operations Management for Competitive Advantage, 9th Edition by Chase, Aquilano, and Jacobs
  • Angewandte Wirtschaftsmathematik by Wolf Leiser (Germany)
  • Management Science by Koohyun Park (Korea)

In addition, a number of textbooks (including earlier editions of some of the above books) use the standard Microsoft Excel Solver to solve many or all of their optimization problem examples. 

Frontline Data Mining Tools in Education

For Data Mining, we especially recommend the new 2nd edition of Data Mining for Business Intelligence, by Shmueli, Patel, and Bruce, which uses XLMiner throughout. This is the leading textbook for learning data mining and is used in more than 120 countries.

Data Mining for Business Intelligence