Optimisation in Excel, the Solver

The Excel Solver Add-In is a very powerful tool. We have already used it to solve systems of non-linear equation, see Chapters 3.3.3 Solving Complex 

Equilibria and 3.3.4 Solmng Non-Linear Equations. The Solver includes optimisation as one of the options. Its main application, within this chapter on data analysis, is data fitting, based on the minimisation of sum of squares. 

There is little information available in the Excel documentation about the algorithms and techniques used by Excel. The algorithms used are not well described but this is irrelevant for most users. 

Solver for non-linear data fitting tasks. Several examples are based on the fitting tasks already solved by the Newton-Gauss-Levenberg/Marquardt method in the earlier parts of this chapter. 

In the first example we re-analyse the double Gaussian from Data Chrom. m (p.158). 

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Depending on the spectra of the components, wrong results cannot be identified by impossible, negative spectra, (also see Chapter 4.4.3, Optimisation in Excel, the Solver, Figure 4-62 and Figure 4-63)... 

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