Today, lets learn OFFSET formula.
What is OFFSET and why bother using it?
OFFSET formula gives us reference to a range, from a given starting point with given height and width in cells.
OFFSET formula syntax
OFFSET formula looks like this:
=OFFSET(starting point, rows to move, columns to move, height, width)
- Starting point: This is a cell or range from which you want to offset
- Rows & columns to move: How many rows & columns you want to move the starting point. Both of these can be positive, negative or zero. More on this below.
- Height & width: This is the size of range you want to return. For ex. 4,3 would give you a range with 4 cells tall & 3 cells wide.
And yes, All the arguments to OFFSET can be references to other cells. That means, you can write =OFFSET(A1,D1,D2,D3,D4) which will refer to a range
- Starting from A1
- Offset by D1 rows & D2 columns
- having the size of D3 rows & D4 columns
See below examples to understand the formula better.
OFFSET formula examples
Why use OFFSET?
Why not write a reference like A1:C4 directly?
Here are a few reasons why,
- Dynamic ranges: Reference like A1:C4 always refers to the range A1:C4. ie it is static. But sometimes, we want our ranges to be dynamic. This is required because our data is changing (every month new row is added, every time we launch a product new column is added etc.)
- We don’t know the exact address: Sometimes, we don’t know what our ranges actual address is. Rather, we just know it is starting from a certain cell etc. In such situations OFFSET is useful.
Understand OFFSET formula – Interactive Workbook
Since OFFSET formula is somewhat tricky to get, I created an interactive workbook so that you can understand how it works. When you input all the 5 parameters, the workbook highlights the range that your OFFSET will give. After playing with it for a few minutes, you will understand the formula better.
Practical use for OFFSET – Average of latest week
Lets say we monitor quality of a plant producing purple puppets. One of the KPIs we monitor is % of rejected puppets. We have been tracking the % of rejects by day in a spreadsheet that looks like this:
So how do we calculate average of latest week?
Assuming the values are in range C3:C18, we can write =AVERAGE(C12:C18)
BUT, WE NEED TO CHANGE THIS FORMULA EVERYDAY!!!
Even puppets would find that boring.
By using the OFFSET awesome sauce, we can write the AVERAGE formula once and forget about it.
=AVERAGE(OFFSET(C3,COUNTA(C3:C300)-7,0,7,1))
Lets break-apart this formula and understand
- To calculate latest week’s average, we need to go all the to the last data point and then get 7 rows from it and average those values.
- This is where COUNTA(C3:C300) – 7 comes in to picture. It counts how many values are there in column C and then subtracts 7 from it.
- The OFFSET would then starting point from C3 to latest week’s starting point.
- To know how this formula works, watch below demo.
OFFSET limitations
While offset formula can return with a dynamic range when you beckon, it does have few limitations:
- OFFSET formula is volatile: In plain English it means, whenever there is any change in your workbook, OFFSET formula is recalculated, thus keeping Excel busy a tiny bit longer. This is not an issue if you use OFFSET formula in a small workbook. But when you use lots of OFFSET formulas in large workbooks, you will end up cursing Excel as it takes too much time to recalculate.
- OFFSET formulas are tricky to debug: Because the references are dynamic, debugging a workbook with lots of OFFSETs can get tricky quickly.
Alternatives to OFFSET formula
There 2 fine alternatives to OFFSET formula.
- Use Excel Tables: Since Excel 2007, we can create tables from structured data and write formulas, create charts that refer to dynamic ranges with ease. Click here to know more about tables.
- Use INDEX formula: Although not exactly same as OFFSET, INDEX formula can also be used to generate dynamic range references. Plus, INDEX is a non-volatile formula, so it wont keep Excel busy unnecessarily. Know more about INDEX formula.
Do you use OFFSET formula?
For most of my dynamic range needs, I rely on tables or INDEX formula. I use OFFSET formula when I have to calculate values like average of latest week. In such cases OFFSET is an elegant solution.
What about you? Do you use OFFSET formula? In which situations do you use it? Please share your tips & examples with us using comments.
Know More about OFFSET
Check out below examples to understand OFFSET formula better:
- Calculations: Sum of values between 2 dates | Moving averages | Average of closest numbers| More…
- Modeling: Calculate IRR of dynamic ranges | Manage scenario analysis
- Charting & Dashboards: Dynamic range charts | Top x chart | Analyzing large datasets | KPI dashboards
- Validations & Pivots: Dynamic Data Validation | Dependent Drop downs | De-duplicate & Sort data
- And many more uses of OFFSET
19 Responses to “How to Distribute Players Between Teams – Evenly”
An excellent solution, especially for large data sets.
Another solution without using solver would be to assign the player with the highest score to Team 1, the 2nd to team 2, 3rd to team 3, 4th to team 3, 5th to team 2, 6th to team 1, 7th to team 1 and it continues. This method would end up with a Std Dev of 0.001247219. This works best with a distribution with lower Std Dev for the dataset.
Full Disclosure: this is not my idea, remember reading something a few years ago. Think it may have been Ozgrid
thinking back I now remember why I read about it. About 10 years back I had to distribute around 300 team members into 25-30 odd teams. Used this method based on their performance scores. I used the method I described to do this and the distribution was pretty fair.
Solver would have saved me a ton of time though 🙂
I think the issue with you first Solver approach was that you took the absolute value of the sum of team deviations (which should always be zero except for rounding) instead of the sum of the absolute values (which is a reasonable measure of how unbalanced the teams are).
Here's another simple algorithm you could use: you start from the top (with players sorted from high to low), and at each step allocate the next player to whichever team has the smallest total so far. You can implement it dynamically with some formulas so it will update automatically when the data changes.
If the scores were more widely distributed (so that this might end up with not all teams the same size), you could add a constraint to only pick among the teams which currently have fewest players at each step, or just stop adding to any team when it hits its quota.
When I tried it on the sample, I got the three teams below, with a STDEV of 0.000942809 (i.e. about half of what Solver got to).
Team 1: John, Hugo, Tom, Josh, Eric, Zane, Charles, Andrew
Team 2: Barry, Michael, Kenny, Joe, Xavier, Patrick, Oliver, William
Team 3: Henry, Steven, Ben, Frank, Kyle, Edward, Cameron, Lachlan
Thanks for sharing!
Hi,
I was looking at all the solutions and this is closest to what I intended to do. I am dividing a bunch of players into 3 soccer teams. Players availability is also a factor while deciding the teams.
So the steps the excel needs to do is as follows:
1) In availability column if "yes" go to next
2) Equally divide 'Goalkeepers', 'Strikers', 'Defenders' basis their quality
So the end result gives each 3 teams a balance of players playing at different positions.
Can this be done on Google spreadsheet with only availability as an input from the user and rest calculates by itself.
Sorry for asking such a pointed question, but I have been struggling to find a solution for it for sometime now!
Hi Ishaan,
I am working on a similar problem at the moment, so I am wondering if you ever found a solution and if you are willing to share what you did.
Hi everyone, this is a variation of the famous Knapsack Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem.
I had to use a VBA implementation recently as part of a problem, where we ar trying to allocate teams of an organization into different locations (we are a large company with many different team). The goal was to optimally allocate teams to individual buildings without putting too many teams into one building and not splitting teams apart.
As we had around 400 teams of different sizes, solver couldn't handle it anymore. Luckily there is a Knapsack algorithm implementation in VBA readily available on the internet :).
I also went with a heuristic approach first!
An interesting mathematical solution but what if Eric and Xavier can't stand each other or Patrick is best friends with Steven - the real life problems that effect "even" teams.
@Joe
You can add more criteria like
If Eric and Xavier can't stand each other
=OR(AND(E15=1,E16=1),AND(F15=1,F16=1),AND(G15=1,G16=1))
It must be False
If Patrick is best friends with Steven
=OR(AND(E5=1,E17=1),AND(F5=1,F17=1),AND(G5=1,G17=1))
It must be True
Note that the 2 formulas above are exactly the same
except for the ranges
One must be True = Friends
One must be False = Not Friends
Nice Post!
Just one question What if number of players are not even or equally divisible.
Nice post Hui!
I download your workbook and just try to change in options the Precision Restriction from 10E-6 to 10-8 and the Convergence from 10E-4 to 10E-10. The process take almost the same time, but the results was great.
The standard deviation I got was 0,000471.
Team 1: John, Tom, Kenny, Frank, Eric, Xavier, Edward, Zane
Team 2: Steven, Hugo, Ben, Joe, Josh, Oliver, Cameron, William
Team 3: Barry, Henry, Michael, Kyle, Patrick, Charles, Andrew, Lachlan
Great application of Solver! Thanks for the link!
Great explanation. Well done... However, I tried with 6 teams of 4 players and solver never did finish.
How about vba code for the same data set.
I have 3 column A B C wherein A has text and B has number Wherein C is blank. And in C1 been the header C2 where I want the name to come evenly distributed the number which is in Column B.
My Lastcolumn is 1000.
Sorry if I'm being slow here, but how is 'Team Score' calculated? I've gone through the explanation several times but it seems to just appear.
@Hrmft
This process uses the Solver Excel addin
Solver is effectively taking the model and trying different solutions until it gets a solution that meets all the criteria
Then solver puts the solution into the cell and moves to the next cell
So yes it appears to "just appear"
Hi ! Thank you so much ! Works great 🙂
I cannot get the fourth Equation to work in my excel spreadsheet
You have =($E$2:$G$25=0)+($E$2:$G$25=1)=1 as a SUMIF solution, I have, =($F$2:$H$13=0)+($F$2:$H$13=1)=1 as my solution but it does not work. The only thing I changed is the ranges. Any suggestions?
Thank you.
Jim
I cannot get the fourth Equation of TURE or FALSE statements to work in my excel spreadsheet You have =($E$2:$G$25=0)+($E$2:$G$25=1)=1 as a SUMIF solution, I have, =($F$2:$H$13=0)+($F$2:$H$13=1)=1 as my solution but it does not work. The only thing I changed is the ranges. Any suggestions?
Sorry I left some of it out in the previous question,
Thank you. Jim