School's Out for Summer...

The hot months of summer offer different opportunities to everyone. Whether it's the chance to catch up on curriculum, learn about new tools and resources, or finally settle down to write that textbook, most of us take this time to hone our craft and expand our knowledge or expertise.

As you delve into your particular summer task, remember when it comes to simulation, risk analysis, and forecasting there's still much to learn. From Crystal Ball 7.3 to the recently released text by John Charnes, Financial Modeling with Crystal Ball and Excel®, we continue to advance our technology and our partners continue to develop new ways of using it.

So as you sip that lemonade, write those books, and recharge for next year, be sure to take advantage of our many resources and tools.

Enjoy,

Dan Mitzner
Marketing Manager, Crystal Ball Education Alliance
+1-303-626-0130 /education@crystalball.com

Visit Our New Alliance Web Pages

With the recent growth in our Education Alliance program, it quickly became evident that we needed to update our web pages to provide our partners with greater use and value. The new pages are filled with helpful tools and resources for teaching and learning Crystal Ball software, while delivering them in a user-friendly format with plenty of room to grow. Go to Web site.

Beat the Increase

The Crystal Ball Education Alliance has always offered, and will continue to offer, discounted software to our academic partners.  In fact, for the past five years, we’ve held our academic pricing firm in spite of commercial increases. With the release of Crystal Ball 7.3 and the need to keep up with a growing industry, it is necessary to increase our academic prices.

Crystal Ball User Conference- Recap

We are pleased to announce the completion of yet another enormously successful annual Crystal Ball User Conference (CBUC). This year's event, was held May 21-23, 2007 at the Westin Tabor Center in beautiful Denver, Colorado. The event was attended by a record 175 customers and partners from over 12 countries and 16 of the U.S. states.

If you missed it and are looking for a way to catch up on all the great presentations, papers, and workshops, you're in luck. We've got it all on our Website, feel free to check it out.

Reflections from this year's participants:

• “I was very happy with the overall conference and the chance to participate as a speaker. Moreover, the conference provided a real incentive for me to consider how I might use CB more frequently in my work. In fact, I have formed a small group of friends who are interested in using CB to discuss how that might be done. In addition, I (as an advisor) spoke about CB with the Dean of the U Toledo Engineering College about having a CB conference.” - Eric Summons, Selection Resource

• “The golf outing was great and hope you will continue it in some fashion. The Crystal Ball user conference was a great event for anyone wanting to learn about the potentials of using monte carlo simulation on a wide variety of applications. It provided hands on workshops which were insightful and useful. The user conference provided me with several case studies and examples that I can use in my on teaching and extension work.” - Jeff Joines, NC State University

• "As we close the books on our annual Crystal Ball User Conference it is a pleasure to reflect on growing Academic contributions.  With a record number of Academic partners in attendance among the 200+ global participants, I was pleased to hear the exciting buzz around the Academic presentations, the networking opportunities, and the social functions including Monte Carlo Night and the Academics Dinner Out." - Mike Franden, Decisioneering Education Alliance

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Each month we like to take the opportunity to recognize one of our Partners in Education. In doing this we hope to shed some light on the various ways in which Crystal Ball software is being taught and incorporated into university classrooms, textbooks, and continuing education programs.

Jiří Hnilica
Associate Professor- University of Economics, Prague

Jiří Hnilica is the Associate Professor at the Department of Business Economics of the University of Economics in Prague, Czech Republic. His fields of interest are risk analysis, financial modeling and business valuation, especially within the entrepreneurial finance environment. 

Accomplishments

• Secretary of Business Economics Department, Faculty of Business Administration, VŠE Prague
• Expert in business economics, risk and financial management
• Member of CEMS research team
• Member of project research team of Ministry for Regional Development of the CR
• Author of upcoming release, Managerial Finance, 2e

Jiří is an accomplished professor and author who recognizes the importance of building Crystal Ball into his curriculum and textbooks. He also is a strong proponent of the Training Series offered through Crystal Ball in conjunction with attending user conferences.“The conference was really a great even which helps in better understanding the importance to apply simulations in risk analysis. I greatly appreciate that academicians were given the chance to meet together (such as at dinner on Tuesday) and thus to get to know each other and to network!” Jiří is currently working with our team and other professors to establish a European User Conference or Forum.

Read Jiří's Guest Article

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As part of our mission, the Education Alliance is continuously looking for ways to make Crystal Ball software fit seamlessly into your existing curricula. To help make that possible, we offer a robust collection of resources through the Alliance Web pages.

Invite Us for our New Half Day on Campus!!

Invite us to your campus for a half day of training and informational seminars designed to enhance your understanding of simulation and Crystal Ball software. As participants enjoy free training and insight into how Crystal Ball software is being used on all levels. The Alliance team hopes to illustrate the connection between the classroom and corporate America, so participants understand the full value of simulation and optimization techniques.

For more information, download our information sheet or contact our Academic Marketing Manager.

Contribute to the Program

As the Education Alliance continues to flourish, one of our primary goals is to expand the resources and
tools available through our program. With that in mind we turn to you, our experts in the field, to help
provide content and insight that will help us deliver relevant and useful resources. There are many ways
our partners can help us provide the most comprehensive set of resources in the industry, we hope you
find one that works for you.

Professor Kits

To ease the implementation process for Crystal Ball software, we have put together these unique Professor Kits. Each kit is a free set of tools designed to equip professors with everything they need to teach Crystal Ball in their classroom. For more information on available kits or additional academic resources for your course, contact the Crystal Ball Education Alliance .

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The Education Alliance is continuously engaging authors on the forefront of their field to include Crystal Ball software as part of their textbook content. Beyond the content inclusion, you will also find that many of our Textbook Partners include free short-term Textbook Editions of the software to be used in conjunction with the text.

"I wrote Financial Modeling with Crystal Ball and Excel to help financial analysts and other interested parties learn how to build and interpret the results of Crystal Ball models for decision support... It is intended for those who wish to construct stochastic financial models, and anyone else interested in learning how to use Crystal Ball."

-John Charnes, Financial Modeling with Crystal Ball and Excel, Wiley Finance, ©2007

~ Recently Released ~

For a full list of titles visit www.crystalball.com/books.html

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Crystal Ball in Weather - Linked Derivatives Valuation
Jiří Hnilica, Associate Professor- University of Economics, Prague

In this paper, an easy-to-use framework for valuation of weather derivatives is developed. Beginning with a discussion of the weather industry and its potential end-users, the paper later turns to the topic of different approaches to valuation of weather derivatives. Special focus is put on “burn analysis” in which the valuation uses historical data to generate possible payoffs. The frequency of these payoffs then may be analyzed as a probability distribution of future payoffs and successively a whole range of statistics can be computed. With Crystal Ball software, these results are attained with great ease. Furthermore, with Crystal Ball’s Bootstrap tool, the uncertainty surrounding the mean and other statistics can be easily detected.

Read Full Article

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As one of our many resources, Web seminars are a fantastic means for learning more about Crystal Ball software, simulation, risk assessment, and predictability. They also serve as a sounding board for those of you looking to distribute information on related topics.

It's important to us to attend all education related conferences throughout the year. Not only does it provide an outlet for meeting new customers, but it gives us a chance to meet in person with many of our existing partners for some quality discussions. Please let us know if you are going to be in attendance at any of the following events. We'd love to meet with you.

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The Crystal Ball User Group (CBUG) is a Yahoo!® online forum where Crystal Ball users can discuss issues and methods related to Crystal Ball software. You can visit CBUG and register to become a member through the Crystal Ball Web site.

Latest topics: Assumptions with (Multiple) dependencies Screen Refresh Rate New CB 7.3 Which discount rate for M carlo simulation of risky petroleum > Click here to visit CBUG and register to become a member

PLEASE NOTE: You have several message delivery options when you join, including whether or not to receive single or digest e-mails. You can also opt not to receive any e-mails and simply log onto the site every so often to view discussion.

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Mike Franden
Senior Account Manager- Education Alliance
800.289.2550 (toll free in US) / 303-626-0118
mfranden@crystalball.com

Newsletter Archive

All previous issues of Tomorrow's Forecast and the Education Alliance Newsletter are available in our newsletter archive.

> Click here to visit the archive