Ever since we moved to Seattle we have been watching TV game show – Deal or No Deal (for lack of better things to do in the hotel) The game provides an interesting look at human nature and risk taking abilities. People who wouldn’t risk their retirement savings or jobs would go to these game shows and take risks to win all or nothing. It is fascinating to see how one makes judgment to accept an offer and take money or continue to play hoping to win even more.
Out of curiosity and my passion for simulating games, I have made a small excel file using which you can play the deal or no deal game. It is a reasonably good simulation of the game on the TV.
Download and play Deal or No Deal Game in Excel
(the file has no VBA or anything, so go ahead and be curious)
How to Play the Excel Deal or No Deal Game?
When you open the downloaded excel you will something like this.The green cells are editable and everything else is locked. Start the game by setting “accept offer?” to “No” and “Play game?” to “Yes”.
If you would like to randomize the suitcase – value assignments, just set “Play game?” to “No” and excel shuffles the values for you. (How to shuffle a list of values in excel using formulas?)
- Start selecting your suitcases one by one. After each pick, the latest offer is shown in the orange color box at the bottom. You can also see that picked suitcases and values already picked getting de-highlighted. See the below illustration:
- Finally, when you like an offer, just say “accept offer” to see how much your suitcase had. Of course excel cannot pay you the money for the accepted offer. So just have a big smile and enjoy. 🙂
- When you want to play again, just select the your suitcase picks (the green tabular area) and hit delete. Go back to first step.
Download the Excel Deal or No Deal Game
How the Excel simulation of Deal or No Deal game works?
- Please note that I have protected the workbook so that you wont accidentally delete any formulas. Just unprotect the sheet (Menu > Tools > Protection > Unprotect Sheet) so that you can understand how the simulation works.
- When you enter “Play Game” value as “No” the values assigned to suitcases are shuffled. How? The shuffling goes on whenever you press F9 or make some changes to the sheet until you change the “play game” to “yes”. The random shuffling formulas use circular reference, something like this:
g10 = if(playgame="no", shuffled-suitcase-value,g10) - Whenever you pick a suitcase, the formulas check 2 things: (1) whether you have already picked that suitcase (2) whether your pick is same as the case assigned to you. If both conditions fail, then the formula would display the value assigned to that suitcase.
- How the latest offer calculation works: As a game player our objective is to take an offer when the value is as close as possible to the expected value (total amounts remaining / total no. of suitcases remaining) at any point. In the TV show the latest offer is derived from expected value of your suitcase . I have used deal or no deal formula from here. This formula takes a random percentage between 20% and 95% of the expected value based on number of suitcases already picked.
- Finally I have used conditional formatting to make the presentation better.
More posts on games & excel that you may enjoy:
Simulating Dice throws in Excel
Generate and Print Bingo / Housie tickets using this excel
Understanding Monopoly Board Game
27 Responses to “9 Box grid for talent mapping – HR for Excel – Template & Explanation”
Great stuff! I can understand how to add a slicer to the pivot table, but how do you implement the departmental selector on the 'Filter' formula scheme?
Just saw this on your Youtube channel, and it’s areat idea...!
An easy way to overcome the "ugliness" of pivot tables and get it to look nice (in the format of the Output sheet), would be to simply build a sheet with the nice map at the top, a pivot underneath it and a slicer next to formatted map and then reference each of the 9 cells in the formatted map to the “related” cell in the Pivot.
Keep up the good work!
/Claus
Thanks Claus. That is a great idea 🙂
Hi Chandoo,
This is great! Curious how to make additional columns operate the same as the Department column (ex. have a "manager column") that would allow you to sort a 9 box by manager, area, or team in addition to department?
Feel free to email me if needed! mfry01@minnetronixmedical.com
Happy New Year
Madison Fry
I am curious about the smae thing. I would like to populate the 9 box with other views as well by adding additional columns. IE., I would like to add location, region, etc. Thank you.
This is great, thank you!
How can i see the whole data set of all the teams in the output table. Need a formula that will pick up all the employees
Hello,
Love the template. Thank you. Question - the drop down to pick a department on the Output tab does not seem to work on the downloadable template. Am I doing something incorrectly?
Thank you!
Hi Heather... Thank you. I am using Excel 365 to make the calculations. If you are using an older version of Excel, then the drop-down filter won't work.
Hi
I was able to follow your 9 box grid and modified based my needs. However, you tutorial did not show how to you create the filter for the "Pick a department. Can you kindly share how to create that filter that updated the grid. Thank you.
I am working on this project but I am struggling with the data validation for the department. I copy the worksheets data entry and output as the managers want to see different tabs for each managers.
I updated the source reference for each tab but It does not update the grid based on the new source. The list was updated but it does not populate the grid based on the performance and potential listed.
In addition the hyperlink Update Data and View Talent Map no longer works. Can you please help me.
I keep getting this error message in the pivot table:
This formula is invalid or incomplete: 'The expression is not valid or appears to be incomplete. Please review and correct the expression.
The following syntax error occurred during parsing: Invalid token, Line 1, Offset 14, ‘.
Hi, I used your 9-box excel template with excel 365. First off, thank you so very much. It is incredibly helpful!! My only question is that the boxes aren't big enough for all of the employees (specifically the middle which we call 'Core Employee'). Is there a way to make the boxes larger? Even though it is in excel, I am not able to increase row height (like I normally do in a speadsheet). Any ideas? Thanks again, Jody
Hi Chandoo,
Thanks for the great content. Re. 9 box grid, pls advise how do I increase the size of the box to accommodate more names?
Hi Chandoo,
I figured it out. Excel 365 has the format row height on the ribbon. Thank you
Merci Chandoo pour le modèle proposé,
j'ai une question et un souhait est il possible de développer davantage ce modèle en insérant la photo de chaque employé.
Hi Chandoo!
Great tutorial and tool, thank you! Your tutorial didn't include how to create additional filters on the "Output" tab. Could you please share how you did it?
Can this be done exactly in google sheets?
Hi Chandoo,
Thanks for the video it was really helpful. Is there any way to multi select the dropdown to display multiple or all departments rather than just one at once?
Hello Prish
I have Microsoft 365 and I am struggling to make the boxes larger/unable to increase row height; any idea how you made this work? Specifically in the Output tab where the map is?
Many thanks
Hello Jody, I have Microsoft 365 and I am struggling to make the boxes larger/unable to increase row height; any idea how you made this work? Specifically in the Output tab where the map is? Many thanks
Is there a way to change the 9 box wording descriptions, i.e. Work Horses, to our own internal langauge?
You can edit the file. The descriptions are textboxes.
Hi Chandoo, this is awesome and has worked perfectly. Due to a big organisation the 9 box grid on the output file is too small. I tried adjusting using the row/width ribbon under the format ribbon however it doesn't seem to work. Is there an easier way to adjust this?
Thanks!
When I drag the formula, it doesn't work, and the order I use with the data changes. In the beginning, the order is it is " candidates," " potential," and " performance," but when it goes to another column, it is " Potential," Performance," and "Candidates."Can you help me? Thank you very much, sending love from vietnam
Hi- I am working on the 9 grid project and I am trying to expand the box since I have over 100 names on a few of the columns. How do I do that?
Hi, Thank you this is great stuff and really useful.
As well as department as demonstrated on your clip, how can I display all candidates on the grid at once?
Many thanks in advance