Forward-Looking Models
Learning Outcomes
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What’s Included
Introduction to Forward-Looking Models
Introduction to Forward-Looking Models
This lesson explains the characteristics and challenges of building forward looking models, and introduces the SupraChem case.
Decision Trees
Decision Trees
Decision trees are a great tool when dealing with probabilities. In this lesson, we'll use them to calculated a formula for risk-weighted returns.
Build an Influence Diagram
Build an Influence Diagram
Using our decision tree, we'll build an influence diagram for our SupraChem problem that will help us structure our final model.
Structuring Your Model in Excel
Structuring Your Model in Excel
In this lesson, we structure our model in Excel using the influence diagram from the previous lesson.
Make Your Model Responsive
Make Your Model Responsive
Building flexibility into the model will allow us to control everything from the input panel, even time-series data.
Shorten Formulas with New Variables
Shorten Formulas with New Variables
Don't be afraid to create new variables to keep your formulas short and more readable. They are particularly useful when you have multiple inputs in a formula that can easily combined.
Risk-Weighted Cash Flows
Risk-Weighted Cash Flows
With revenue and production costs created, we can now calculate our project cashflows and the estimated return on initial investment.
Preparing a Tornado Chart
Preparing a Tornado Chart
Tornado charts are a great way of finding out which which parameters most affect our output. However, they are difficult to build and require substantial data analysis.
Building a Tornado Chart
Building a Tornado Chart
In this lesson, we'll finish building our chart and identify some valuable insights that the chart provides.
Update Warnings for Charts
Update Warnings for Charts
Some charts, such as the Tornado, won't update when we change a control panel input. As a safety mechanism, we'll build in warnings that tell us when our chart data has not updated.
Adding Taxes to Our Model
Adding Taxes to Our Model
Our second model iteration will calculate the tax shield provided by plant depreciation and subtract the final taxes paid from operating cashflows.
Building Multiple Scenarios
Building Multiple Scenarios
Multiple scenarios should always be considered when evaluating high-risk projects. In the next two lessons, we'll add optimistic and pessimistic scenarios to our output panel.
