@RISK 5.0 Compared to Crystal Ball® 7.3
Contents
1. GENERAL Application Settings MODELING Distribution Entry Excel References Correlation of Distributions RiskMakeInput Function Application Settings lets you control customizable defaults such a graph settings simulation settings reports and more in one convenient window Settings automatically apply to all future models and may be exported for sharing with other RISK users for consistency across a group Distributions can be entered graphically through the Define Distribution window or typed directly into the spreadsheet as standard Excel functions Define Distribution window is floating callout that points the cell it references It displays a palette of all available distributions grouped by type and displays custom defined distributions in the RISK Library Browse through all cells with input distributions by pressing Tab key Overlay distributions for comparison by pointing and clicking Preview multiple distributions in a single cell formula Distribution statistics are displayed with the graph Excel formula bar shows distributions entered Arguments can include mathematical expressions and cell references ranges which can be typed in or entered by clicking in the cell s Fully supports Excel s capability and rules for absolute and relative cell referencing i e C 5 Allows off worksheet and off workbook cell referencing like all Excel functions do Supports multiple named matrices Enter cor2. as the RISK engine is in RISK Extreme Speed can produce different results than normal speed and has significant limitations such as lack of compatibility with user defined macros full cell referencing all cell ranges and the full Excel function set all of which give it limited applicability to real world models See Crystal Ball Extreme Speed in the Appendix Notes for details from the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual Palisade Corporation Americas 1 607 277 8000 Europe 44 1895 425050 Asia Pacific 61 2 9929 9799 www palisade com sales palisade com Page 2 of 8 RISK 5 0 Compared to Crystal Ball 7 3 Overview Stress Analysis Advanced Sensitivity Analysis RISK 5 0 User can specify any portion s of a distribution to be sampled during a simulation in lieu of sampling from the entire distribution This lets you simulate more specific situations with ease Advanced Sensitivity Analysis allows you to select a number of RISK distributions or any other worksheet cells and run trial simulations while varying these inputs across a range MPALISADE Crystal Ball 7 3 None None Goal Seek Finds starting conditions for desired simulation None outcome RESULTS Graphs and Charts Sensitivity Analysis Results Summary Window Reporting in Excel Save Simulations in Workbook RISK Library Fully resizable and customizable Windows standard graphs and charts that can be fully cu
3. RISK 5 0 Compared to Crystal Ball 7 3 Overview RISK 5 0 GENERAL Native Excel Functions All RISK probability distribution functions statistics functions and other functions are in native Excel function format They are treated by Excel like any other Excel function You can see them in the Excel formula bar Arguments can include mathematical expressions and cell references ranges which can be typed in or entered by clicking in the cell s This means maximum ease of use and modeling flexibility Up to date Office 2007 style interface completely integrated with Excel Floating callout windows with results graphs and probability distributions point to the cells they reference Browse through cells in your model containing input probability distribution functions and results by simply pressing Tab key Summary Model and Results windows display all model data complete with thumbnail graphs Summary windows are linked directly to the spreadsheet so changes made in them are reflected in the spreadsheet Create overlay graphs by dragging and dropping one graph onto another Drag and drop Tornado graph bars to create Scatter Plots Create Summary graphs by pointing to ranges Off sheet and off workbook references are fully supported Features graphs and options can be adjusted via context sensitive right click menus Backward Compatibility Models developed with current version are interchangeable with previous versions Simi
4. variables and forecasts directly or indirectly through formulas From p 310 of the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual If you used the Hypergeometric distribution in a model created in Crystal Ball 2000 x you might notice slight data changes when running that model in the current version of Crystal Ball This is because some rounding might occur when converting the probability parameter used in previous releases to the success parameter used in this version of Crystal Ball From p 332 of the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual In previous versions of Crystal Ball discrete values with the same probability could be entered in ranges with five columns or more Now they cannot be entered in ranges with five columns but can only be entered in single columns or ranges with six or more columns to distinguish them from sloping ranges In previous versions of Crystal Ball continuous uniform ranges with cumulative probabilities could be entered in a two column format Now a three column format is required The three column sloping range format used in previous versions of Crystal Ball has been replaced by a five column format From p 336 of the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual The beta distribution changed from previous versions to Crystal Ball 7 Palisade Corporation Americas 1 607 277 8000 Europe 44 1895 425050 Asia Pacific 61 2 9929 9799 www palisade com sales palisade com Page 6 of 8 Appendix Further Information an
5. Ball stores them In previous versions of Crystal Ball you could choose whether to use static or dynamic cell referencing in assumption parameters With static referencing all cell references are resolved at the start of a simulation and then frozen while a simulation is running If you open a model from a previous version any static references are converted into dynamic references If you don t want parameter values to change when a simulation is running be sure cell references in parameters do not reference Crystal Ball data cells assumptions decision variables and forecasts directly or indirectly through formulas Distribution Fitting in Crystal Ball From p 29 of the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual Only continuous distributions are considered for distribution fitting Simulation results forecast data can be fit but only up to 1000 iterations From p 30 of the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual Difficulties can occur when distribution fitting is selected for one or more forecasts with large numbers of trials This is true for Normal as well as Extreme speed To avoid these difficulties fitting is disabled for all run modes after 1 000 trials have been run Crystal Ball Extreme Speed From p 358 of the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual Ordinarily there may be slight numerical differences in simulation results between Extreme and Normal speed modes These differences are primarily due to roundoff errors In certain ci
6. DE RISK 5 0 Compared to Crystal Ball 7 3 5 0 Crystal Ball 7 3 Forecasting Available with companion tool StatTools for Excel in the Companion product CB Predictor offers time series and Statistics DecisionTools Suite StatTools allows users to utilize forecasting but lacks wide range of statistical procedures over 30 wide ranging statistical procedures plus many lacks ability to create custom procedures and lacks true built in data utilities include time series forecasting Excel functionality descriptive statistics normality tests group comparisons correlation regression analysis logistic regression pareto charts quality control nonparametric tests and more StatTools functions are true Excel functions Allows users to define own custom statistics functions that appear on StatTools menu NOTES Crystal Ball Functions Crystal Ball does offer probability distribution functions that can be placed in spreadsheet formulas as are RISK distribution functions The limitations associated with these functions make them generally unusable for risk modeling These functions are essentially external to Crystal Ball and the program does not treat them in the same way it handles Assumption cells They cannot be graphically displayed correlated sampled using Latin Hypercube techniques or used when a random number seed is set Data cannot be extracted from them and they cannot be included in any reports In addition they are not include
7. as been set It isn t possible to make this setting in Excel 2000 so volatile functions cannot run at Extreme Speed in that version of Excel In Extreme speed it is not possible to run user defined macros such as CBBeforeTrial CBAfterTrial and CBAfterRecalc during a simulation A small group of Excel functions are not supported in Extreme speed CALL CELL GETPIVOTDATA INFO HYPERLINK REGISTER ID and the CUBE functions added in Excel 2007 CUBEMEMBER CUBEVALUE CUBESET CUBESETCOUNT CUBERANKEDMEMBER CUBEMEMBERPROPERTY CUBEKPIMEMBER Excel allows certain undocumented argument constructs for standard functions Some of these argument constructs are still not supported in Extreme speed Extreme speed does not support dynamic ranges where the OF FSET function is used on one or both sides of the range constructor Extreme speed supports defined names and their use in formulas but not the Excel Accept labels in formulas option which allows cell labels to be used in formulas without defining them as names Extreme speed does not support multiple area references such as A1 A5 B1 C1 E1 except as used in standard functions such as SUM that accept a variable length argument list of cell ranges Extreme speed does not support 3 D references where a cell range used as an argument in a function call for example spans multiple workbooks Because of bursting Crystal Ball cannot check cell err
8. ay be changed from simulation to simulation via native SimTable function Results from all simulations can displayed together using all RISK reporting capabilities ADDITIONAL TOOLS Optimization Parallel processing DecisionTools Suite Decision Trees RISK Industrial edition includes RISKOptimizer for advanced optimization combined with Monte Carlo simulation for uncertainty analysis RISKOptimizer was developed on the same platform and by the same development team as RISK ensuring seamless integration and full compatibility with RISK functions RISK Industrial edition includes integrated RISKAccelerator for parallel processing of simulations using all available CPUs or cores on multi CPU or multi core processor machines For every additional CPU or core simulation speed increases almost linearly Available by itself or with DecisionTools Suite DecisionTools Suite adds PrecisionTree for decision tree analysis TopRank for automated what if sensitivity analysis RISKOptimizer for optimization under uncertainty Evolver for genetic algorithm optimization NeuralTools for predictive analysis with neural networks and StatTools for time series forecasting and advanced statistical analysis RISK functions work directly in other Suite products just like they do in RISK All products were developed from common platform by same software development team Available with companion tool PrecisionTree in the DecisionToo
9. d Notes M PALISADE RISK 5 0 Compared to Crystal Ball 7 3 RISK 5 0 Crystal Ball 7 3 Copy Paste in Crystal Ball From p 72 of the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual The Excel commands do not copy the Crystal Ball data even though they might appear to since the cell colors are copied To copy Excel data and Crystal Ball data you must use the Excel edit commands and then use the Crystal Ball edit commands to copy the Crystal Ball data From p 218 of the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual Because Crystal Ball cannot define assumptions in formula cells you need to convert formulas to values before pasting the assumption cells Formulas in Crystal Ball From p 21 of the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual Assumptions cannot be defined for formula or non numeric cells From p 218 of the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual Because Crystal Ball cannot define assumptions in formula cells you need to convert formulas to values before pasting the assumption cells Excel References in Crystal Ball From p 26 of the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual All cell references in assumption parameters are treated like absolute references when cutting and pasting Crystal Ball data Crystal Ball always stores the cell reference in Al format even if the Excel preference is set to RIC Lformat The global RICI format preference is not affected by running Crystal Ball but the name ranges are in fact changed to Al format since that is the way Crystal
10. d in Crystal Ball s sensitivity analysis thus use of them causes sensitivity information on standard Assumption cells to be misleading Use of these distribution functions is not encouraged in the Crystal Ball documentation or tutorials From p 337 of the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual Distributions defined with probability functions differ from those entered with the Define Assumption command in these ways e You can t correlate them e You can t view charts or statistics on them e You can t extract data from them or include them in reports e They are not included in sensitivity analyses or charts Backward Compatibility in Crystal Ball From p 20 of the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual Crystal Ball 7 no longer supports two types of cell definition in the same cell If an assumption or a decision variable is defined in the same cell as a forecast in a Crystal Ball 4 x or 5 x 2000 x workbook the forecast will be deleted when the workbook is converted to Crystal Ball 7 format From p 26 of the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual In previous versions of Crystal Ball you could choose whether to use static or dynamic cell referencing in parameters If you open a model from a previous version any static references are converted into dynamic references If you don t want parameter values to change when a simulation is running be sure cell references in parameters do not reference Crystal Ball data cells assumptions decision
11. erence P P and Q Q graphs with results from multiple goodness of fit tests Custom chi square binning Multiple data sets can be fit and reviewed Fitted distributions in model can be automatically updated when data and fit changes Overlay different fitted distributions for comparison Automatically fit unlimited simulation results data with a single click RiskCompound function combines frequency and severity distributions into a single function saving thousands of separate distributions in insurance and other models RiskCompound also supports cell references and formulas for more complex modeling All input distributions outputs and correlations are listed in a tabbed table with thumbnail graphs and summary statistics of each component Model window is linked to spreadsheet so changes made in window carry into model itself Drag and drop thumbnail graphs onto spreadsheet to enlarge RISK simulations are calculated 100 within Excel supported by Palisade sampling and statistics proven in over twenty years of use Palisade does not attempt to rewrite Excel in an external recalculator to gain speed A single recalculation from an unsupported or poorly reproduced macro or function can dramatically change your results RISK uses an optimized simulation engine multiple CPUs and multi core processors to give you the fastest calculations RISKAccelerator is also available separately to speed up simulations by using available CPUs o
12. larly models developed in earlier versions can be run in RISK 5 0 without modification MODELING Capacity Models with 100 000 or more distributions can be simulated Fully supports Excel 2007 s enlarged worksheets The only limitations are from Excel not RISK Available 39 distributions including all distributions provided Distributions with Crystal Ball RISK Library A SQL database where you can store and share custom probability distribution functions with other RISK users to ensure consistent modeling across an organization or workgroup RISK Library distributions are available in Define Distribution window and Library itself is accessible via standard RISK interface MPALISADE Crystal Ball 7 3 Probability distributions are external to Excel may not be viewed in formula bar with other Excel functions and may not be embedded in formulas Cell referencing is limited and they require proprietary Crystal Ball commands to perform simple tasks such as copying and pasting cells See Crystal Ball Functions in the Appendix Notes for more information Numerous nested or overlapping out of date dialogs Difficult to determine which dialog corresponds with which cell No capability to browse through assumptions or forecasts No summary windows for managing various Crystal Ball components Right clicking is only supported in CB windows not in spreadsheet itself No Windows menu for managing dozens of open window
13. ls Suite PrecisionTree allows users to model decisions in tree or influence diagram format in Excel In addition it is designed to work with RISK and Monte Carlo simulations can be run on trees MPALISADE Crystal Ball 7 3 Must pull up full Run Preferences dialog to change simplest settings Must reset each simulation before changing Run Preferences Run Preferences are saved globally and apply to all models Not possible to save specific settings for individual models Pauses but only locates and identifies one of the errors each time From p 356 of the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual Because of bursting Crystal Ball Extreme Speed cannot check cell errors after every trial as it does in Normal speed only at the end of a burst Limited to changing only one or two spreadsheet values by simulation Must use limited external Decision Table tool Decision Table tool has limited output statistics and graphics OptQuest optimization component is from a third party developer and not as tightly integrated with Crystal Ball Fewer companion tools available only OptQuest for optimization and CB Predictor for time series forecasting OptQuest was created by a third party vendor resulting in clumsy integration Palisade Corporation Americas 1 607 277 8000 Europe 44 1895 425050 Asia Pacific 61 2 9929 9799 www palisade com sales palisade com Page 5 of 8 Appendix Further Information and Notes M PALISA
14. ors after every trial as it does in Normal speed only at the end of a burst Spreadsheets without Crystal Ball data always run in Normal speed even if Extreme speed is selected in the Run Preferences dialog This could happen if you have Crystal Ball spreadsheet functions entered in the model but have not defined assumptions forecasts or decision variables Disclaimer All comparison information presented here is accurate to the best of our knowledge All software was used according to vendor specifications and versions tested were those available at the time of publication April 2008 Any comparison errors are unintentional We welcome corrections or suggestions Please submit corrections or suggestions to feedback palisade com Crystal Ball is a product of Oracle Inc Palisade Corporation Americas 1 607 277 8000 Europe 44 1895 425050 Asia Pacific 61 2 9929 9799 www palisade com sales palisade com Page 8 of 8
15. rcumstances these slight differences can compound and grow in magnitude From pp 348 360 of the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual By default Crystal Ball is set to use Extreme speed when initially loaded Because the Extreme Speed feature uses the Polymorphic Spreadsheet Interpreter certain Extreme Speed functions may return slightly different results than the corresponding Excel function for extreme values of any input arguments For example this can occur with statistical and inverse distribution functions not all models are compatible with Extreme speed Small differences in the last few decimal places of certain built in function values should be expected due to minor algorithmic differences in the way formulas might be computed References to cells in other open workbooks are dynamically updated if those cells depend on one or more assumptions If the external reference is part of a formula not a simple external reference this is not compatible with Extreme speed Palisade Corporation Americas 1 607 277 8000 Europe 44 1895 425050 Asia Pacific 61 2 9929 9799 www palisade com sales palisade com Page 7 of 8 Appendix Further Information and Notes M PALISADE RISK 5 0 Compared to Crystal Ball 7 3 RISK 5 0 Crystal Ball 7 3 In Extreme speed circular references with short Iteration setting may not match Excel s values because of differences in calculation algorithms For most consistent
16. relations via graphical matrix or functions in Excel Define coefficients by typing in or by using convenient slider bar that updates correlation Scatter Plots in real time Allows correlation instances where the same matrix can be used to correlate different groups of inputs for quick model setup No limitation on number of correlated cells After simulation you can see Scatter Plots and coefficients of actual correlations simulated You can also correlate a time series that has a similar set of distributions in each time period The RiskMakelInput function turns any Excel formula into an RISK input Use this to get RISK to treat your proprietary calculations just as it does its own distributions when calculating results RiskMakeInput can also summarize many individual distributions into a single input simplifying your Tornado graphs MPALISADE Limited setting of defaults by individual dialog boxes in separate parts of the software Distributions are defined external to Excel in dialog boxes and are not shown in cell contents Assumptions or inputs cannot be typed into formula bar as an Excel function must use Distribution Gallery Can graph only a single distribution at a time with limited statistics Cannot overlay distributions for comparison Can only view either assumption graph or statistics no option to view both simultaneously Inconsistent handling of absolute and relative references Cell references off the active wo
17. results set Iteration to at least 1 000 However if a circular reference is non converging its results can differ greatly when run at both Extreme and Normal speed regardless of the Iteration setting These functions are not supported in Extreme speed during a simulation CB GetForeStatFN CB GetForePercentFN CB GetRunPrefsFN CB GetAssumPercentFN CB GetCertaintyFN To be compatible with Extreme Speed user defined functions must be pure A pure function is one that computes its value solely on the basis of values passed to it as arguments A function that is not pure might reference global data not passed as an argument For example it might get the value of a worksheet cell or a defined name and use this as an input to compute the function value If the global data depends on the assumptions if for example it is a worksheet cell with a formula computed from the assumptions it will have a distribution of values in Normal Speed but it will appear deterministic have a single value in Extreme Speed This is because the worksheet cells change on every trial in Normal Speed but they don t change in Extreme Speed Range arguments in user defined functions are only compatible with Extreme Speed when they are handled as Variant types User defined functions whose arguments are static their values do not change during a simulation are not called by Extreme Speed unless the Volatile property of the function h
18. rkbook are not supported See Excel References in Crystal Ball in the Appendix Notes for details from the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual No support for correlation instances From the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual p 345 There is a practical limit of about 250 fully correlated assumptions assumptions that are correlated to every other assumption and up to about 1 000 serially correlated assumptions assumptions that are correlated to one or two other assumptions for each workbook Palisade Corporation Americas 1 607 277 8000 Europe 44 1895 425050 Asia Pacific 61 2 9929 9799 www palisade com sales palisade com Page 4 of 8 Appendix Further Information and Notes RISK 5 0 Compared to Crystal Ball 7 3 SIMULATION Simulation Settings Pause on Error Run multiple simulations back to back RISK 5 0 Access the most common simulation settings such as number of iterations and simulation to run from convenient Simulation Settings toolbar Unique user defined settings may be saved for each model User defined defaults also available and may be transferred to other RISK users Pauses on simulation errors and gives locations of all error causing cells at once for easy diagnosis Lets you review the formulas and values for cells which are precedents to the error causing cell This allows you to examine values which feed into the problem formula Any number of spreadsheet values and functions m
19. s Previous versions of Crystal Ball may not run properly accurately or at all in Crystal Ball 7 3 without modification In some cases even modification will not solve the problem See Backward Compatibility in Crystal Ball in the Appendix Notes for details from the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual From Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual pp 21 61 and 63 You should define less than 1000 assumptions decision variables and forecasts per worksheet Only 21 for example Crystal Ball is lacking Chi Squared Inverse Gaussian LogLogistic Pearson V and VI None Palisade Corporation Americas 1 607 277 8000 Europe 44 1895 425050 Asia Pacific 61 2 9929 9799 www palisade com sales palisade com RISK 5 0 Compared to Crystal Ball 7 3 Overview MPALISADE RISK 5 0 Crystal Ball 7 3 Copying and Pasting Support for Formulas Distribution Fitting Compound Function Model Summary window SIMULATION Simulation Speed and Accuracy Uses standard Excel copy paste as all RISK distributions are true Excel formulas Excel s Fill Down command is fully supported Distributions are true Excel functions and can be placed anywhere Distributions can be embedded in formulas and there is no limit to the number of distributions per cell Expected value automatically updates when distribution changes Fits continuous and discrete distributions to sample cumulative and density data Comparison Diff
20. simulation results may be stored directly in your workbook This makes it easier to share models with others A SQL database where you can store and share RISK simulation results graphs data reports etc with other RISK users The makes auditing and comparison with other simulations easy No box plots More limited customization options Ability to set up user defined defaults is limited and or does not work as documented Cannot drag and drop overlays No browsing through forecast charts Partial not available for any distribution entered as a function Must specify sensitivity analysis in Run Preferences before simulation Only one calculation method available Rank Order Correlation No pre screening of inputs for relevance No results summary window to display forecast cells data or statistics Must generate inflexible static reports in Excel Forecast graphs may only be viewed by opening each forecast cell one at a time in its own Crystal Ball window to view or edit it Charts may be copied and pasted into Excel as pictures not native Excel format charts Limited report customization allows for no formatting and selection of content categories only Palisade Corporation Americas 1 607 277 8000 Europe 44 1895 425050 Asia Pacific 61 2 9929 9799 www palisade com sales palisade com Page 3 of 8 Appendix Further Information and Notes RISK 5 0 Compared to Crystal Ball 7 3 5 0 Crystal Ball 7 3
21. stomized Graphs appear in callout windows pointing to cells they reference Wide variety of graph types including histograms cumulative curves scatter plots box plots summary graphs and tornado graphs Overlay graphs may be created by dragging and dropping or by pointing and clicking Graphs can be copied and pasted in Excel Word or PowerPoint and exported to Excel in native Excel format Browse through cells with results graphs by pressing Tab key Automatic sensitivity analysis available after all simulations using two methods Rank Order Correlation and Multivariate Stepwise Regression RISK sensitivity analysis pre screens inputs based on their precedence in formulas to outputs in your model Inputs that have no link to an output are removed from the sensitivity analysis thus avoiding erroneous results The RISK Results Summary window summarizes the results of your model and displays thumbnail graphs and summary statistics for your simulated output cell and input distributions Drag and drop thumbnail graphs onto spreadsheet to enlarge and create overlays Custom templates in Excel allow user defined reports with custom formatting and desired statistics and graphs Reports and graphs may be generated automatically in Excel after simulation using reporting functions or may be sent to Excel from an RISK window at any time with a single click Excel formatted RISK charts can use all Excel graph formatting options RISK
22. ver a network Excel copy paste not supported Limited proprietary Crystal Ball copy paste commands are required to copy paste Crystal Ball distributions and data Although Excel copy paste is not supported it appears to work and no error message is given No support for Fill Down command See Copy Paste in Crystal Ball in the Appendix Notes for details from the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual Limit to one distribution per cell and assumptions cannot be defined in cells with formulas Expected value in cell not updated if distribution is changed See Formulas in Crystal Ball in the Appendix Notes for details from the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual Only fits sample data for a single test at a time Input distributions are not updated when fitted data changes Fit cannot be reviewed later after fit is run and distribution is entered No overlays of multiple fitted distributions No fitting of discrete distributions See Distribution Fitting in Crystal Ball in the Appendix Notes for details from the Crystal Ball 7 3 User Manual No model summary window to display assumptions decision variables correlations or forecasts in model Management of Crystal Ball components requires individually opening each cell at a time in its own Crystal Ball window to view or edit it All calculations are performed external to Excel Crystal Ball Extreme Speed feature was developed by a third party and as a result is not as tightly integrated with Crystal Ball
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