The Scenario Analysis If a car travels at 60 mph for two hours, how much distance will it cover? You find the answer easily, because you know the formula linking speed and time to distance. Scenario Analysis tool attempts to find a value for one of the terms of a formula that leads to the desired outcome. These kinds of problems are often referred to as simulation problems.

The Scenario Analysis Now, assume that you are a high school principal and have demographic information about students and their college plans. For example, you know that John has an IQ of 100, did not receive a scholarship, and plans to attend college. Kevin, with an IQ of 110, also plans to attend college, after securing a scholarship of $10,000 a year. Janet, on the other hand, a really bright student, does not plan to attend college.

The Scenario Analysis You can not change various demographics such as the parent income, but it is in your power to help Janet secure a scholarship. How big of a sum should you offer her so that she is more likely to attend college? Would she plan to attend if you secured a $5,000 scholarship for her? Although these are simulation problems, they are very different from the speed example. The major difference is that there is no simple formula linking the demographics and scholarship information to the fact that a student plans (or does not plan) to attend college.. The Scenario Analysis component of the Table Analysis Tools contains two tools —What-If and Goal-Seek—that are designed to solve exactly these types of problems

The Scenario Analysis The two tools - What-If and Goal-Seek- are actually the same tool, which first analyzes your data and discovers the patterns linking all the columns in the table to the target column When using the Goal Seek tool, you specify the goal (in Janet’s case, the goal is to have a value of Yes in the Plans to attend college column). Then, you choose the column you want to change (again, assuming that you can change the value of the Scholarship column in this example) and let the tool search all the possible values of that column (in this case, Scholarship) to find the one that maximizes the likelihood that the goal is reached.

The Scenario Analysis The two tools - What-If and Goal-Seek- are actually the same tool, which first analyzes your data and discovers the patterns linking all the columns in the table to the target column When using What-If, you get to specify a new value for any column in the data table, and see how this hypothetical change affects the outcome column. For example, if you select Janet’s row in the data set, you can specify a value of 5000 ($5,000) in the Scholarship column to see how this is likely to affect Janet’s college plans.

The Scenario Analysis The Goal Seek Tool The Goal Seek tool finds solutions to questions such as, ‘‘What is the value in column X so that column Y has a value of Z?’’ We use the Goal Seek tool to find how to change the commute distance for a customer in order to get that customer to purchase a bike, Customer has a commute distance of more than 10 miles, lives in the Pacific region, and did not purchase a bike. You will first use the Goal Seek tool to find the commute distance value that will make this customer most likely to buy a bike

The Scenario Analysis The Goal Seek Tool The first group, Goal to Seek, allows you to specify the goal you want to reach for the currently selected row. For this example, select the Purchased Bike column. The next three lines allow you to specify the goal value for the column you selected. Depending on the values in the target column, some of the lines may be disabled. If your target column contains numerical values, then your goal may be a percentage of the old value, or a range

The Scenario Analysis The Goal Seek Tool The second group in the dialog, What to Change, is where you specify the column to be changed in order to reach your goal. in this case Commute Distance. In the same group, you have the option to select the list of columns to be used in analysis. In addition to the modified column and the target column, other table columns will be used in this analysis, because they may contain interesting patterns that affect the target column. link.

The Scenario Analysis The Goal Seek Tool The third group, Specify Row or Table, allows you to choose whether the results should be presented for the current row only, or for the whole table

The Scenario Analysis The Goal Seek Tool The first element of the result is the status: Goal Seeking for Purchase Bike has found a solution. The tool was able to find a value for Commute Distance that, together with all other attributes of the currently selected row, makes the customer a very probable bike buyer. The second element of the result is the actual solution: Commute Distance = 0-1 Miles. If the customer’s commute distance will change to less than 1 mile, then the customer is very likely to buy a bike. The third element of the result tells you how confident you can be in this result. In this case, the confidence is very good.

The Scenario Analysis The What-If Tool When using What-If, you get to specify a new value for any column in the data table, and see how this hypothetical change affects the outcome column. For example, if you select Janet’s row in the data set, you can specify a value of 5000 ($5,000) in the Scholarship column to see how this is likely to affect Janet’s college plans. The What-If tool estimates the impact that changes in one column have over a different column (the target column) of the table

The Scenario Analysis The What-If Tool The first group, Scenario, allows you to describe the change to simulate. The first control in the group is a drop-down list of columns in the table. We can select the column that changes. For this example, select the Children column. The next two lines allow you to specify the change for the column you selected. For all columns, you can specify the new (changed) value in the To Value field. For numeric columns with many different values, you can also specify a percentage change. If the column is not numeric, or it has only a few values (such as the Children column), the Percentage option is disabled

The Scenario Analysis The What-If Tool The second group in the dialog, What Happens To, is where you specify the target column to be estimated in the context of the simulation. in this case Purchase Bike

The Scenario Analysis The What-If Tool The third group, Specify Row or Table, allows you to choose whether the results should be presented for the current row only, or for the whole table.

The Scenario Analysis The What-If Tool Typical result for a What-If operation. The first element of the result is the status: What-If Analysis for Purchase Bike has found a solution. The tool executed successfully, and determined the most likely value for Purchase Bike in the context of changing the number of children from 0 to 1. The second element of the result is the actual result: ‘Purchase Bike’ = Yes. Having a child will likely make this customer a bike buyer. The third element of the result tells you how confident you can be in this result. In this case, the confidence is very good.