In computing, goal seeking is the ability to calculate backward to obtain an input that would result in a given output. This can also be called what-if analysis or back-solving. It can either be attempted through trial and improvement or more logical means. Basic goal seeking functionality is built into most modern spreadsheet packages such as Microsoft Excel.
According to O'Brien and Marakas, optimization analysis is a more complex extension of goal-seeking analysis. Instead of setting a specific target value for a variable, the goal is to find the optimum value for one or more target variables, given certain constraints. Then one or more other variables are changed repeatedly, subject to the specified constraints, until you discover the best values for the target variables.
Read more about Goal Seeking: Examples
Famous quotes containing the words goal and/or seeking:
“Whenever you pray, make sure you do it at school assemblies and football games, like the demonstrative creatures who pray before large television audiences. That is the real goal of the thing. But do not, I urge you, pray all alone in your home where no one can see. That does not get you ratings.”
—Garry Wills (b. 1934)
“Natural knowledge, seeking to satisfy natural wants, has found the ideas which can alone still spiritual cravings. I say that natural knowledge, in desiring to ascertain the laws of comfort, has been driven to discover those of conduct, and to lay the foundations of a new morality.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)