Fun with math
 

On another forum I was reading a discussion pertaining to pricing that had to do with the question of what's better - a large number of small jobs or a small number of large jobs? Since this boils down to an optimization problem I decided to crank out a little pricing optimization tool for folks to play with. It's written in Mathematica, which is a very powerful math tool from Wolfram. They recently came out with a player which lets those without a Mathematica license run Mathematica applications.

To use the pricing tool you'll need to:

1. Download the player which you can find at http://www.wolfram.com/products/player/download.cgi - it will run on your choice of OS.

2. Install the player

3. Download the pricing tool from http://10squaredcorp.com/analysis/Pr...imization1.nbp

4. Start the player and open the nbp file you downloaded.

5. Read the example and make adjustments for your products.

6. Profit!

Have fun. Let me know if you find it useful.

I downloaded it and everything. However, after reading the example, I scroll to the bottom and there is a blank grey box and some code. I have no buttons to push, and it will not allow me to edit anything. It seems like a really cool idea, but I am unable to do anything with it. I'm sure it's something I'm doing wrong.

How many bytes is your nbp file? I see 111287 bytes on the server.

You can verify that your player installation is OK by downloading some demonstrations from the Wolfram demonstrations site and see if they run.

I've tested on both PC and Mac and several other folks have given feedback on it, so I'm confident the file on the server is good. You should see several sliders for adjusting parameters and bar charts that show product mix and profit based on the parameter set.

My download was what was messed up. Thanks for the help!

I found it again.
 

Thanks for sharing this. I saw you reference this post before and I couldn’t find it in this huge forum when I needed it. So I posted a new thread in the wedding/ event section trying to find it and no one knew what I was talking about.

I cannot wait to get home and download it!

#3 link is a bunch of code. Any suggestions?

Use the player from the first list entry to open the .nbp file with the code.

George/

Curious as to whether the mathematical model factors in the reality that there will be significantly more competition for the small jobs, than there is for the larger ones? And that building a level of equipment access and expertise necessary to successfully compete for the larger jobs doesn't make competing for the smaller ones a tad inefficient. (I'll just let those HMI's sit there - the next 30 jobs only need an Arri kit)

In a practical sense, my gut tells me you're always better off working toward larger budget work - since many of the most tiresome factors of obtaining and successfully completing work diminish in an environment of fewer, larger projects.

I'd also be concerned that there are scads of similar relatively intangible factors that I'm not sure can be easily "quantitified" to make a mathematical model in video production that is fundamentally useful.

But I'd be interested in what those of you who are using the tool think.

Good points Bill. No one should equate this tool with a business plan. You can in fact model some of the points you raise. For example, the increased competition risk would probably be met with a marketing strategy that would have an impact on your overhead (labor and advertising). The labor component may or may not subtract from the availability of an employee for shooting depending on whether you are open Saturday and the employee(s) book sales. Other marketing support such as lead development would typically happen during the week.