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Two sized vitamin pills - how many of each at a specific dosage?

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    Two sized vitamin pills - how many of each at a specific dosage?

    I have a stock of Vitamin B1 capsules in two sizes - 100 mg and 250 mg

    How can I calculate the number of each capsules required to meet a certain dosage, say 650mg or 350mg?

    Can anyone help please?

    Regards

    Richard

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    Re: Two sized vitamin pills - how many of each at a specific dosage?

    I would probably do a "trial and error" kind of approach. Starting with an algebraic statement of the problem:

    n*100+m*250=target
    n and m have to be integers.
    Solve for one of the variables (I would probably solve for n)
    Try different values for m (0,1,2,3) -- calculate n
    Solution's are found for any case where n is an integer. (m=1 and n=4 would be one solution for 650)
    Quote Originally Posted by shg
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    Re: Two sized vitamin pills - how many of each at a specific dosage?

    I tried to do a setup with Solver but I don't know how to tune it. Alf or shg or bsalv or any other Solver-guy, are you out there?
    I even considered a macro that would run solver for each column at a time (kind of lame, yes I know ) but even there it would run thousands of sub- whatever.
    Restrictions were int, >=0 and <10 and I tried both minimising ABS and just go for zero.
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    Re: Two sized vitamin pills - how many of each at a specific dosage?

    If I used Solver, I would set it up as a root finding type problem:

    n*100+m*250-target=f(m,n)=0

    Enter values for n, m, and target
    Enter f in a cell
    Call Solver and tell it to set f equal to a value of 0 by changing m and n subject to constraints that m and n >=0 and integer

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    Re: Two sized vitamin pills - how many of each at a specific dosage?

    Yup, that is pretty much what I did. And solver did a fair but not perfect jobb and it took forever. Evolutionary algorithm, it doesn't seem to accept any other for this setup. I assume the settings for this and that under options have to be tweaked as well somehow but I have no clue what they even mean.

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    Re: Two sized vitamin pills - how many of each at a specific dosage?

    I did it long hand with a vlookup table with dosages spaced at 50mg up to 1500 - seems to work in the range I need

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    Re: Two sized vitamin pills - how many of each at a specific dosage?

    I've set up a macro running solver in a loop. There are probably better ways of setting up solver but as Sweden celebrate "Midsummer" yesterday my brain is not yet up to producing a more advanced solution.

    To test run macro "SolvLoop"

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    Re: Two sized vitamin pills - how many of each at a specific dosage?

    Transposed for convenience:

    A
    B
    C
    D
    E
    1
    Dose
    250
    100
    2
    250
    1
    0
    B2 and down: =($A2 - C2*C$1) / B$1
    3
    300
    0
    3
    C2 and down: =MATCH(TRUE, MOD($A2 - {0,1,2,3,4} * C$1, B$1) = 0, 0) - 1
    4
    350
    1
    1
    5
    400
    0
    4
    6
    450
    1
    2
    7
    500
    2
    0
    8
    550
    1
    3
    9
    600
    2
    1
    10
    650
    1
    4


    I believe that works for any dose 250+ divisible by 50.
    Last edited by shg; 06-21-2014 at 05:52 PM.
    Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate

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