What Can Chemistry Solver Do?

Chemistry Solver  solves complex problems on which you might ordinarily use a trial-and-error approach.

When a chemist is trying to solve a complex problem, it is common to take advantage of the mathematical capabilities of a spreadsheet program such as Excel to optimize a problem by adjusting the variables. However, most real-world chemistry problems are too complex to solve efficiently by trial and error. Let Chemistry Solver  to solve these problems for you. If you can define your problem on an Excel worksheet,Chemistry Solver  can find a solution. For example, it may be used to:

• curve fit
• balance complex equations
• build mathematical models from empirical data
• improve reaction efficiency
• solve coupled sets of nonlinear partial differential equations
• train artificial neural networks

Why use Chemistry Solver  Simply put,Chemistry Solver  solve problems that might be difficult (or nearly impossible) to solve any other way.

What is Chemistry Solver?

Chemistry Solver  grew out of developmental work on Genetic Algorithms, proven to be a powerful problem solving technique. Genetic Algorithms are being used to solve problems in a wide range of disciplines. Over 500 research articles were published in 1994 alone on Genetic Algorithms; interest in these computer programs is widespread and increasing.

The problem solving process Chemistry Solver  uses is called a Genetic Algorithm because it is the software equivalent of evolution. The terminology we use is borrowed from genetics. A single solution to a problem is referred to as a "member of the population". The values that define a problem are referred to as "genes". Better solutions are described as having a better "fitness" and are given a higher likelihood of "mating". Although the terminology is borrowed from the genetic field, our software is designed to solve a wide variety of problems in fields ranging from chemistry to finance.

Why use Chemistry Solver?

If you have ever tried to solve a complex problem by trial and error you know how frustrating it can be. Just as you make a little progress by changing one variable, you realize that some other variable is more important.Chemistry Solver  takes the guess work out of problem solving. It uses the power of evolution to solve the problem for you.

If you have tried the solvers that come with spreadsheet software you know that they are merely linear problem solvers and often do not work on more complex problems.Chemistry Solver  is designed to work efficiently with the complex multivariable problems that chemists deal with every day.

Chemistry Solver  is the most powerful and flexible product of its type on the market.Chemistry Solver  gives you a high level of control over improvement strategies allowing it to be tailored to each problem. Detailed examples in the user's manual provide advice and insight into fine tuning the software.

Chemistry Solver  works on problems involving hundreds of real numbers, integers, and permutations (numerical ordering problems) alone or in combination.Chemistry Solver  has a proprietary optimization algorithm for permutations that makes it faster and more efficient than any other software available.

How does Chemistry Solver work?

The first step is to design your problem on an Excel worksheet with variables and formulas that can include real numbers, integers, and/or permutations. Your worksheet must calculate one value that is a measure of how well the values in the current solution perform. We refer to this value as the "fitness" because it measures how "fit" the current solution is.Chemistry Solver  minimizes or maximizes this one value. In other words, it finds the solution with the best fitness.

After you define your problem in Excel,Chemistry Solver  will gather information from your worksheet.Chemistry Solver  provides a list of the names of all the variables you have defined on your worksheet. You select the names of variables for Chemistry Solver  to work with and the cell that contains the fitness value.Chemistry Solver  reads the values from your worksheet and then creates a set of trial solutions. A set of trial solutions is called a "population". Each individual trial solution is referred to as a "member of the population".

Each member of the population is a complete trial solution and has the same number of variables in it as the problem that you set up on your worksheet. These values are referred to as "genes" - each member of the population is described by its gene values.Chemistry Solver  then efficiently explores the set of possible solutions in order to find an optimal solution. The processes used to optimize your problem are called "mating" and "mutation".

Mating is an exchange of information between trial solutions. When two population members mate, they produce one offspring that has some information from each parent. This exchange can produce a trial solution that is better than either of the parent solutions. Better solutions are more likely to mate and spread their genes throughout the population.

Once a new population of trial solutions has been created, some of the offspring undergo mutation. During mutation, individual values in a trial solution are changed. Mutation is an important step because it introduces new values. If mutation did not take place, some potentially good trial solutions would never be found because not all possible solutions are represented in the initial population.

Hill climbing is a part of mutation process where key values continue mutating if the mutations introduce improvement.Chemistry Solver  has special hill climbing features that produce rapid improvement of trial solutions.

After mating and mutation are completed, the new trial solutions replace the old ones if they are better. In this fashion, the solution to the problem improves with each new cycle of mating and mutation. Using the principles of evolution,Chemistry Solver  rapidly finds the optimum solutions to difficult problems.

A demo version of this program is available on the demos page.