Person Dispatching and the Rectified 5-cell Simplex Pentagon

There are a bunch of wonderful apps and location-based services for managing supply lines, keeping track of door-to-door sales associates, and optimizing these paths.  But I came up with a quick model using Google Spreadsheets.

The basic idea is that you have a map with n locations that you have to visit.  The goal is to find out how many places you could go in a day based on a bunch of parameters (distance between points, average speed, etc.). So how do you do it?

The first thing I did was determine what my map would look like.  In the real world you would actually know the distances between each location and how many locations you have.  In this case I don't, so I guessed using a mathematically-pleasing design.  I decided on a orthographic projection of a rectified 5-cell pentagon, which is a complicated way of saying, in 2 dimensions, a small pentagon inside of a big pentagon.

To do the calculations you can determine distances from each points as long as you know the length of each side (T) and the length of diagonals (D) of the pentagons.  You can adjust this in I2 and I3 on each of the person tabs. Other variables you can change include average speed while traveling, amount of time spent at each location, some lag time to account for variation, and number of hours worked per day.

Once you have added all of your information you can get a forecasted number of locations to be visited per day as well as other random information.  I've also included a sensitivity analysis by varying time at location and lag time, all as percentage change from current forecast.


If you'd like to play around with if you can access the spreadsheet here and go to File>Make a copy for an editable version.

Enjoy!

March Madness Is Coming!!!

If you are as much of a basketball fan as I am then you are getting excited for March Madness!! But since this is a Blog devoted to Google Docs, I guess I should connect it someway.  Bracketology anybody? I'm currently working on a Google Docs based bracket that will take advantage of the =googletournament() function.

I'm working on two versions.  One version will be set so that you and your friends can compete against each other and have multiple brackets in a pool.  The other version is a single bracket so you can keep track of your own score!

Currently, features include automatic scoring, validated team choices so you can only choose the available teams for that certain game, customizable options, a standings view and information about each team and game!

The biggest hurdle is filling out the bracket.  Due to the current limitations of forms, a form input is just not feasible.  Filling out the bracket will require each of your team members to fill out their own bracket, or you can  share only their bracket using tab level permissions in spreadsheets.

Don't worry; there will be plenty of instruction on how to use it.  But stay tuned!

If you have any recommendations for features that you would like to see on the bracket please put it in the comments!

Cheers!

Destination: Grad School

I am starting Graduate School next week at Saint Louis University School of Public Health.  In two years I will hopefully be graduating and receiving my Master of Health Administration.  Fortunately, SLU uses Google Apps for Education which means I'll be doing some posts about how to use Google Docs in the classroom from a professor's standpoint as well as how I use Google Docs to keep up.  In addition, I am working for the School of Public Health on a new EMHA program.  I might do a few posts about how I use Google Docs for business uses as well.

Cheers!