Patent US 8,996,433

A method is provided wherein natural-language formulas are translated to obtain structured expressions or rules. When a query is received requiring analysis of data, the rules are evaluated to obtain a solution. The evaluation includes: obtaining the solution from a stack of existing solutions; searching a database of rule definitions if the solution is not available from the stack; calculating a solution using an explicit definition for each rule and the data, if the explicit definition is available for a given rule; calculating a solution using an implicit definition for each rule and the data, if the explicit definition is not available; and determining a best solution according to a predefined priority of data types. The solution is then supplied to an output format, such as a spreadsheet. The rules are received from a plurality of files, include descriptive variable names, and are applied to all cells in the spreadsheet.