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

Teaching both predictive and prescriptive analytics?  Consider Analytic Solver Platform for Education, our new "super-product" with comprehensive support for forecasting and data mining, data exploration and visualization, Monte Carlo simulation, risk analysis and decision trees, and the most powerful conventional and stochastic optimization available anywhere.

Instructors:  Risk Solver Platform for Education, a special version of Frontline Systems’ market-leading Risk Solver Platform software for Microsoft Excel, can simplify your life, save classroom time, and enrich your students' experience with optimization, simulation and risk analysis, decision trees and other analytical methods.  And in these tough economic times, it's easy on your academic budget!

For pricing details, click Using Risk 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

Risk Solver Platform for Education includes:

  • Full Excel Solver compatibility, for worksheet models and VBA macros; the classic Solver Parameters dialog and Risk Solver Platform’s new Ribbon and Task Pane are completely interoperable.
  • Full Excel 2010 and Excel 2013 compatibility, in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
  • All the capabilities of Risk Solver Pro (formerly Risk Solver), 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 Robert Bixby, Zonghao Gu, and Edward Rothberg of Gurobi Optimization, respected computational scientists and former members of the CPLEX development team.

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:

  • Prof. Cliff Ragsdale's best-selling textbook Spreadsheet Modeling and Decision Analysis, 6th Edition -- available now from Cengage Publishing.
  • Profs. Stephen Powell and Ken Baker's popular text Management Science: The Art of Modeling with Spreadsheets, 3rd Edition -- available now from John Wiley.
  • Profs. Fred Hillier and Mark Hiller's Introduction to Management Science: A Modeling and Case Studies Approach with Spreadsheets, 5th Edition
  • Prof. Eric Denardo's Linear Programming and Generalizations: A Problem-based Introduction with Spreadsheets.
  • Profs, Eksioglu, Seref, Ahuja, and Winston’s Developing Spreadsheet-Based Decision Support Systems, Using Excel & VBA, 2nd Edition. -- available now from DSS Books
  • Prof. Messer and Kaiser's Mathematical Programming for Agricultural, Resource, and Environmental Economics.
  • Prof. Ken Baker's Optimization Modeling with Spreadsheets, 2nd Edition.
  • Prof. James Evans' Business Analytics, 1st Edition -- which also includes a license to use our XLMiner add-in for data mining!

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

Reasonable Education Version Problem Size Limits

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

  • 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 100 uncertain variables and 50 uncertain functions for Monte Carlo simulation
  • Up to 10 simulations and 10,000 Monte Carlo trials per simulation
  • Maximum one processor core used by Risk 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 Risk 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 Risk Solver Platform (it's very straightforward).  Read our FAQ for answers to some very common questions.

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.