Statistical Functions Package: Normal Distribution

AlejandroGomez

Concept: Include basic Statistical Functions in Anaplan 

 

Description: I miss some basic statistical functions among the available functions. These formulas are extremely useful when it comes to calculate chances or risks, which is a common and useful bit within the forecast calculations.

 

A good example is the lack of a counterpart in Anaplan for the Excel formula NORM.S.INV to retrieve the standard normal distribution of a probability %. But other helpful functions would be: NORM.DIST, NORM.INV, NORM.S.DIST

 

Why? Besides being formulas commonly used in some fields, at the minute, the workaround to carry out these calculations in Anaplan is quite space consuming in the WS: it is possible to calculate the Distribution of the Probabilities in Excel and copying the result (Probabilities and Distribution) into an Anaplan list. But depending on how accurate the Distribution is (how many decimal places), the list will contain more items and therefore will have a bigger size, reaching up to 2Gb for just the list alone. 

 

Benefits: I ignore how hard would be to add the mentioned functions, but definitely they will save a lot of time to the model builders, quite some space in our WS and will not only broaden the applicability of Anaplan in other fields, but also making possible to model more advanced and complex solutions in Anaplan for those fields, expanding the Connected Planning concept.

 

Normal distribution table with 4 million itemsOnly for looking up the associated value in the Table

 

 

Miran

Status changed to: In Review

usman.zia

I agree with @AlejandroGomez anaplan needs to integrate these basic functions as creating work arounds will eventually lead to performance issues as the model and users grow / dimensions. 

 

Anaplan is a calculation engine it needs the functionality to be the best one which means having these basic statistical calculating functions. 

Rebecca

Status changed to: In Review

mlalka01

I also agree with @AlejandroGomez. This functionality is key to financial planning and analysis, for example producing Monte Carlo simulation of portfolios.

Agandhi

This is using basic statistics. we need this in Anaplan.

Axel_H

We need this in Anaplan for basic statistics.

Jcorlett

I also agree with @AlejandroGomez . Having to derive some fairly basic statistical functions from 'first principles' by using several steps, modules, and calculations has the potential to add a lot of size and complexity to otherwise simple models. I'd almost (but not quite) go as far as to say without these functions I wouldn't endorse Anaplan as a tool of choice for any forecasting process that requires use of the listed functions (below)

 

The functions I miss from Excel are;

 

- Mean

- Stdev

- IQR

 

 

david.savarin

+1. Could we have the ability to code and bring custom functions to anaplan ?

I am sure some people would be open to collaborate on a **** project to build custom anaplan function s and make them available (after a review from anaplan tech leads) to every builder.

axel.frot

Is there any information on the progress of statistical functions?