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:
“Too many existing classrooms for young children have this overriding goal: To get the children ready for first grade. This goal is unworthy. It is hurtful. This goal has had the most distorting impact on five-year-olds. It causes kindergartens to be merely the handmaidens of first grade.... Kindergarten teachers cannot look at their own children and plan for their present needs as five-year-olds.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“Before we go seeking man we will have to have found the lantern.—Will it have to be the Cynic’s lantern?”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)