Use Excel to optimise KFC order - excel

Don't laugh, but, from time to time, my friends and I host a multiple-course KFC dinner, and I have a spreadsheet to optimise the order. This is to make sure we order the right combination of 'bucket'-type items (i.e. SKUs that contain multiple pieces, often of different types):
to minimise leftover items
to reduce the total cost
Here is the spreadsheet I currently use, and here's a screenshot:
To use it, you first specify the number of participants in A2, and what you want each person to have in E2:E6 (we're really only interested in the chicken, so 'sides' are treated as generic to simplify).
Here's the manual part, that I'd like to improve.
The next step is to look at the ideal totals for each item (F2:F6), and to try to set the right quantities (H12:H20) of the 'bucket'-type SKUs that I have recreated (A11:G20), so that the output totals (H21:M21) match the ideal totals (F2:F6).
The optimisation part is to get the deltas (H22:M22) as close to zero as possible, and to get the total cost (N21) as low as possible.
So, my question is: is there a way to do this better? I think Excel has some sort of Solver functionality, but I'm afraid I don't know how I'd go about even starting to use that, as my Excel skills are pretty rudimentary. Oh, and in case it makes a difference regarding functionality, I'm using Excel for Mac v16.37.
Any thoughts gratefully appreciated! :)

I can't take any credit for this, but am happy to say that GSerg left me a couple of comments that pointed me in the right direction, and I now have Solver set up to organise my chicken parties!
Here are the parameters for anyone who is curious:

Related

Rate increase analysis, way to to calculate

Story that I need to go over auditors' note to provide feedback for all Provisions where Increase/Decrease > 20% line in Column H. Looking into provided doc I don't get how they calculate this e.g. = 1 - (RateOld / RateNew)
There nothing special behind those Rates, higher rate is better, and indicates better participation.
I need to be very careful before jumping into conclusion, don't want to mess with auditor's way. Anybody knows what is the logic/science/approach behind his formula, I pasted on the right more traditional ones I used.
Best
Thanks all, assume that they just switched new and old columns in provided sheet, so we divide by New Rate rather then Old. those formulas are same, first one always positive:
1-(G/D) = (D-G)/D
And logically this answers question how much change was last year, rather then This year.

Dividing people in to groups based on strength and rank

Edited:
after using Solver which Saulo Suggested I have managed to get excel sorting them in to groups up to 8 groups of 3. though am approaching troubles when going further ideally at this time I need to be able to do 18 groups of 3. but even with the same settings obviously adjusting for the increase in groups excel seems to belly up on the process and fails, any suggestions to adapt to this?
I am trying to figure out an easy and as accurate as possible without going too crazy with the math and formulas as I am basic with my excel coding (coding in general) to calculate the ideal groups of 3 based on rank and strength for a video game.
I want to pair the strongest with the weakest and then fill the gaps evenly for the 3rd person. so, that each team’s overall strength is the same roughly.
factors I have is a designated leader(rank) and an overall power level(strength).
doing this manually isn't too hard but trying to automate it is. any thoughts or suggestions would be amazing!?
something like this but automated which is where I am getting stuck, as I want to be able to add more players and adjust strengths as they come along.
Hope this makes sense.
Jordan, you have a classic situation to use "Solver". First of all, you have to make "Solver available in your Excel. Select Home -> Option -> Supplements -> Solver. Then, the solver button´s will be at the "Data" menu.
Solver is about solving a problem with especific conditions, changing specific cell, with specifc purpose. In your case, your purpose is creat teams with the minimal strength diference. A condition of your problem is that teams should have the same number of players. See how I organized the sheet.
Sheet
When do you open solver, the first field is "Seat Goal". Our goal (or purpose) is reduce the diference between teams as minimal as possible. So we selected the cell with the diference between teams. Then we have to tell to excel that our purpose is that cell have the minimal value (chossing "min").
Then we have to tell excel wich cells they can change values to achieve our goal. In this case, Excel can change the teams of player, so we select the cells with the teams.
Last we have to tell excel whats condition (or restrictions) of this problem. The first restction is that the total of player of team 1 is tree. The total of players of team 2 is, both, 3. Then we have to tell to excel what are the limits (superior and inferior) of values of variable cells. In this case, we chose superior or equal to 1, AND (other restrction) inferior or equal to 2.
Ok. Now we have a problem with specif goal, changing the value of specifc cells, with specif restriction. Now solver can work. Then choose the method of soluction "Evolutionary", Honestly, I do know the diference between the methods, but my experience is that evolutionary method works better than the others.
I recomend reading the excel tutorial on solver. At first, all of us think that is too dificult, but believe that is simpler than it seems.

Calculate most common time of day from spreadsheet values

Preliminary
This question applies to any spreadsheet system. I would like help in breaking down the problem, as opposed to an answer to the problem. (Although the latter would be most useful.)
I understand Stack Overflow is good for specific programming problems, and I understand it may take me a few attempts to get my question right, so please help me clarify my question by providing suggestions and I will update it.
Like many data novices I have good experience with discreet data (e.g. how many enquiries last month), but I struggle to understand how to deal with continuous data (e.g. how to discover patterns, and where the criteria for a query are not yet known).
The question
I have a spreadsheet where each row represents a "website enquiry". There is a datetime column, and I'd like to discover patterns in this data, to answer questions like:
what is the most common time of day to receive an enquiry
what is the most common day of the week to receive an enquiry
other useful information I can glean from the data, to allow me to target possible customers
This would be similar to the functions you often see in Social Media analytics, such as "best time to tweet".
I understand that calculating the most common day of the week is very simple, as days are discreet objects. So I don't need help with this!
I would like to avoid simply splitting up the day into four arbitrary time periods (e.g. breakfast, lunch, dinner, nighttime) and counting the number of rows that fall into these bounds. What if these time periods are not best to use to segment the data?
Is there another way, other than quantizing my data using arbitrary bounds?
You could use clustering to find out what the most common times are. Basically, you compare the time separation of enquiries and cluster them just like discrete 1D set of numbers using, for example, the average linkage clustering criterion. As you reach a reasonably small number of clusters, you will start to see the most dominant times of day (and if you want to evaluate those, you can take the time values which are the weighted centres of the biggest clusters).

Excel Index Function

I just want to thank you guys in advance. I think you guys are doing a great job in helping people out with programming stuff. Pats on the back for all of you.
Here is what I've been working on: I have daily stock price return data on about 4000 stocks. I want to add them to my portfolio after observing their performance for 12 months. I will choose the top 10% best performers and bottom 10% worst performers. I will create multiple portfolios over a period of time. I have done that with no problem.
I want to use the INDEX function to calculate the daily return of my portfolio. Not all 4000 stocks are in my portfolio, about 300 stocks are in my portfolio at any given time. The daily portfolio returns will be calculated by multiplying the weights (they are equal weighted, so 1/300) to that stock's return on the specific date. I assume it has to do with a combination of INDEX, SUMPRODUCT, and IF or MATCH functions.
I have been thinking this for a long time and I just can't get to the bottom of it. I have attached pictures for a portion of what I was working on. I think will give you a good picture of what I'm trying to do. I bet this is such an easy thing for you guys. I hope you can help me out! Thanks again!
PICTURES:IN or OUT portfolio & Stock's individual returns
Charles
Not sure I understood your problem, but here is a trial suggestion:
You get data for 4000 stocks while you are monitoring 300. So, you need to find the correct one within your sheet (there will be 3700 that will not match anything).
If you have your stocks listed in, say, column "A", you could use the function LOOKUP (well explained in the Web). If you need to get the row of your stock, you can use the function MATCH.
If this is not what you are looking for, it means that I (at least) did not understand you, so you would need to add details to your question.

How Can I Model Many Short Time Series Samples?

How Can I Model Multiple Short Time Series Samples?
For example, let's say I have a new subject each month, and I measure each subject every day for the entire month. I then want to model these multiple strings of independent time series because I assume that there is an underlying pattern that applies to all 12 subjects. However, a time series with an n of 30 is too short to model, so is there some way to group these 12 time series together for a parallel analysis?
I imagine the way to handle this is similar to how one might handle a time series with multiple breaks of unknown length. Unfortunately, I unaware of how to deal with this type of data structure.
Any thoughts on where to even begin? What terms I should research?
Well. Depends on what you're interested in. Makes it a lot easier if we know what kind of data you have, and what you're trying to analyse.
Trying to answer your question: If you assume that there is some underlying structure which is homogenous for, say, 6 of the subjects, and different for the other half, you can just pool the two data sets and do some kind of group-mean analysis. If you're interested in a temporal change over the 12 months, then you need to assume that each subject are homogenous across whatever variable you're measuring.
Normally, for e.g. timeseries in economics, what you're describing is called "censored" or "truncated data".
If we want to measure the income of everyone in a country, we do this by checking electronic paychecks or something. But some people at the end of each tail, may not have a visible income. Poor people may be earning income in other ways, and rich people may want to hide some of their income. This is censored data, and any advanced timeseries stats book will have something on that.
Truncated data is similar. Just imagine income again. If we truncate everyone who makes < 10,000$ a year, then this will "cut off the end" of your distribution. There are also remedies for this. Again check an advanced time series book.
Hope this helped a bit.

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