Question

I have a parameter in A1 that influences “TOTAL” in a random and very high standard deviation. Lets say A1 is 2…then TOTAL Values could be 1…5…17…3…2..2…etc If A1 is 1 then TOTAL Values could be 1….3…5..15…9…10..etc

I would like solver to figure out which value in A1 would equate to the best AVERAGE of TOTAL after X runs. Where I can define X.

In my example you can tell that A1=1 is better on average after 6 runs. However, if you run solver normally it would say A1=2 is the best, because it produced a value of 17.

Answer 1

This doesn’t seem to be the kind of problem you solve with solver. Why not write a macro that loops through the values of A1, X times, keeping a running sum of the TOTAL values for each A1? When it’s all over, the largest sum is also the largest average.

The inner loop will be something like this:

Redim tSum(1 to maxA1)
for i = 1 to maxA1
    tSum(i) = 0
    for j = 1 to X
        [A1] = i
        Application.calculate
        tSum(i) = tSum(i) + TOTAL
    next j
next i
'now step through tSum. The index of the largest value 
' is the value of A1 desired. Put it in a handy cell.

It has to be a macro, not a function because it changes A1.