Minimize costs? Create a conference schedule with fewest early-morning sessions? In this excerpt from the book Data Smart, find out how to use Excel's free Solver add-in to do some data science ...

There are tough problems that every business faces, and they can slow things down, make budgets stretch, or put off decisions ...

The popular Solver for Excel add-on has been redeveloped for Excel 2008 by Frontline Systems and Microsoft.

Excel can solve equations through several of its mathematical functions, but the single Excel tool that works on the largest variety of equations is the program's Solver Add-in.

Still, Solver is used in many business, engineering, and scientific analyzation tasks, and accordingly, users asked Microsoft's Mac BU to bring it back. As a result, Solver for Excel 2008 is ...

Solver is a linear programming / analysis tool for Excel that was included with Excel 2004 as an add-in, but dropped from Excel 2008 since it required Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).