Operations Research

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    Michael Trick's Operations Research Blog

  • Comment Spam

    Michael Trick
    6 Nov 2009 | 10:05 am
    Brian Hayes, author of American Scientist’s computing science column and author of the bit-player blog, has a very nice article on issues with spam in the comments of his blog.  My blog is nowhere near as popular as Brian’s, but I too attract a reasonable amount of spam.  Some spam is easy:  autogenerated, lots of links, easy to identify by things like Akismet.  This is the stuff I never see, which is good since it runs about 100/day.  The software simply handles things. But other spam takes a bit more effort.  As Brian points out, there is a market for people to browse the…

  • Without Operations Research, Gridlock!

    Michael Trick
    5 Nov 2009 | 5:04 pm
    In many applications, it can be difficult to measure the effect of an operations research project.  For instance, my colleagues and I provide schedules for Major League Baseball.  What is the value added by the operations research we do?  MLB doesn’t have the time, energy or money to handle multiple schedulers in parallel:  they decided five or so years ago that they liked our schedules, and they have been using us since.  We have gotten better over time.  What is the value now?  Who knows?  The non-operations research alternatives no longer provide schedules, and the process,…

  • Open Source = Geek?

    Michael Trick
    5 Nov 2009 | 7:10 am
    The parent of SourceForge.net has decided to become Geeknet, Inc (how much did they have to pay for geek.net, I wonder). I have mixed feelings on this.  On one hand, I am trying to learn from Wil Wheaton and embrace my inner geek.  I have done this so well that my colleagues tell me my inner geek is leaking out quite a bit to my outer geek.  So celebrating geekdom is good, right? Well, maybe not right.  I am involved in an operations research open source endeavor, COIN-OR.  Part of COIN-OR is convincing companies that open source is not too nerdy or experimental.  There are lots of good…

  • Congratulations to Tom Magnanti

    Michael Trick
    30 Oct 2009 | 1:05 pm
    Tom Magnanti has been appointed President of the Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore’s so-called “fourth university”.  Tom, of course, is one of the preeminent researchers and administrators in operations research.  He has written lots of influential papers and books.  His book with Bradly and Hax on Applied Mathematical Programming had a huge effect on me (take that Russ Ackoff) and is the sort of book the field badly needs now. Tom was President of INFORMS while I was on the Board (he was President two before me, so we had some pretty in-depth…

  • Russell Ackoff passed away

    Michael Trick
    30 Oct 2009 | 12:24 pm
    Russell Lincoln Ackoff passed away October 29, 2009.  Ackoff was one of the most controversial researchers in operations research.  A prolific writer, his early work was pure operations research, as it was understood in the early 1960s.  Ackoff was an early (1956-57) president of the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA, a forerunner of INFORMS) and co-wrote an influential textbook on operations research with Churchman and Arnoff in 1962. By the late 1970s, Ackoff was disillusioned with operations research, penning articles with titles such as “The Future of Operational…
 
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    ThinkOR

  • Healthcare system improvement project management: what's the right balance?

    25 Oct 2009 | 12:06 pm
    I now live in London, UK, and work for a rather famous hospital, renowned for its medical reputation internationally. My role is a project manager on 2 system improvement projects. Such projects are also labeled as "transformation" or "modernisation" projects, depending on where you work. The idea is to work with doctors, nurses, managers, clerical and administrative staff, as well as patient families, who live and breathe the hospital, so that this group of people take ownership of the problems and solutions. We meet one day a week for a full day, and project managers like me and lean…

  • Introducing variability, flow and processes in a funny video to anyone

    13 Sep 2009 | 1:43 pm
    I'm leading on two variability & flow management projects at the hospital right now, and the terms "variability" and "flow" are certainly not something the medics hear much about. I needed a quick way of explaining what the projects are about, what these terms mean, and what kind of problems we are trying to resolve. A colleague suggested this video from the ever popular "I Love Lucy" TV series, episode "Chocolate Factory". It does a wonderful job of making people laugh, as well as acting out some strong parallels to a process, and the variability and flow within the process. Take a look…

  • "Doing good with good OR" - it's not just academic

    22 Aug 2009 | 9:43 am
    ThinkOR reader, Tina asks:I recently graduated from college and am considering going to graduate school to study Operations Research because it is a subject I really like. There's something strangely satisfying about improving the real world with mathematical models. However, I am conflicted about what kind of career path a masters in OR would put me on. In an admittedly naive way, I want to use my education to improve our society. I think that OR can be better applied to many social services to improve efficiency. However, are there currently opportunities like this available? It seems like…

  • Simple Hostel Yield Management Example

    14 Jun 2009 | 10:45 am
    Continuing on from my thoughts in Yield Management in Hostels?, in this article I present a simplified example of how a Hostel might use simple Yield Management principles to increase its profitability.Yield Management or Revenue Management or Revenue Optimization is a set of theories and practices that help companies, typically in the transportation and hospitality industry, gain the most revenue possible by selling a limited product where short-term costs are, for the most part, fixed. Simply put, this is why the prices of plane tickets change every time you check and why you can save on…

  • Yield Management in Hostels?

    8 Jun 2009 | 8:14 am
    In my recent travels in Europe I have again had significant exposure to the Hosteling Industry. As readers of this blog will know, we can't help but seeing Operations Research or opportunities in our daily lives. Sure enough we find ourselves analyzing our surroundings and considering the pricing structures of our hostels. In this article I hope to begin an exploration of pricing strategies in the hostel industry that I will continue after I have collected some of your thoughts and more of my own.The Hostel industry has been rapidly developing throughout the world. According to Wikipedia,…
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    Punk Rock Operations Research

  • score one for OR!

    Laura
    2 Nov 2009 | 1:20 pm
    I saw a recent press release about one of Sheldon Jacobson’s projects that investigates vaccination issues for H1N1. What is interesting about the press release is that it  actually promotes the field of operations research. Maybe the grassroots efforts to promote OR are working!  You can read the press release for yourself, but check out the plug for OR: Jacobson’s field is Operations Research (OR for short). OR is a combination of a multitude of tools, including aspects of engineering, computer science, mathematical modeling and algorithms, and statistical analysis. It also…

  • Using OR for good

    Laura
    28 Oct 2009 | 9:22 am
    Margaret Brandeau gave the first WORMS keynote address entitled “From Venn Diagrams to Public Health Policy: An OR Journey” This is my third blog post about the INFORMS Annual meeting. Dr. Brandeau’s excellent talk chronicled her journey from an undergraduate math student at MIT to a OR superstar.  She could recall the exact day when she decided to become an operations researcher.  This day was one of the first days of an applied math class, when her professor outlined several real applications of math.  This opened Dr. Brandeau’s eyes to the many things that math could do. …

  • OR and H1N1

    Laura
    23 Oct 2009 | 10:49 am
    This is the second of three posts about the INFORMS Annual Meeting. I enjoyed a talk by Dr. Richard Larson of MIT about the timely topic of H1N1 and operations research.  I tuned out much of the alarmist news prior to the conference (to keep my sanity) and instead adopted a rigorous handwashing regimen.  Larson’s talk highlighted the many opportunities for addressing H1N1 issues using operations research, including: Queuing for vaccinations. Reneging on vaccinations (some health care workers are refusing required vaccinations). Timing the vaccinations (before the prevalence peaks) is…

  • criminal background checks

    Laura
    22 Oct 2009 | 12:04 pm
    This is the first of three posts about the INFORMS Annual Meeting.  Check back in the next few days for the other two posts. I thoroughly enjoyed the Threats to Life and Limb session.  Thanks to Arnie Barnett for organizing a great session! In this session, Al Blumstein gave a provocative talk about criminal recidivism.  His research is motivated by employe background checks.  Since most records are electronic, arrest records from the distant past survive.  In many cases, a reformed individual could be denied employment for a minor indiscretion committed decades previously.  The data…

  • WORMS at INFORMS

    Laura
    9 Oct 2009 | 1:21 pm
    I am getting ready for the INFORMS Annual Meeting.  Stop by and say hi if you see me there.  I will be blogging about the conference during and after the conference.  As the WORMS VP of meetings, I must publicize the WORMS events, most of which occur on Tuesday: Sunday @6:15 Business meeting in the Hilton Tuesday @8am Panel Discussion:  Challenges and Opportunities for Women in Academia Tuesday @11 Keynote address by Margaret Brandeau Tuesday @12:30 Luncheon (buy tickets in advance).  This is always my favorite INFORMS event. Tuesday @2:45 Panel Discussion: What I Wish I Had Known: Ph.D.
 
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    greenOR

  • Forestry and Wood Manufacturing Research Group

    or4green
    31 Oct 2009 | 7:19 pm
    There is a Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials (CORRIM) administered through the University of Washington. Focusing on forestry and wood manufacturing, the consortium consists of members from several universities and industry. Life-cycle assessment seems to be an important part of the methodology. The O.R. connection can be found in their objectives: CORRIM’s research is focused on two objectives: 1) to develop a database and modeling system for environmental performance measurements associated with materials use and, 2) to respond to specific questions and issues…

  • MORS Power & Energy Meeting … Coast Guard Sustainability

    or4green
    26 Oct 2009 | 7:29 pm
    The US-based Military Operations Research Society (MORS) will be holding a Power and Energy Special Meeting, November 30th to December 3rd, 2009 in Reston, Virginia. From the meeting website: The P&E Special Meeting will focus on the requirements and metrics, science and technology, Modeling and Simulation (M&S), processes, and methodologies needed to address the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s (OSD’s) Energy Policy to consider operational energy risk from logistics demand and how to frame Energy Efficiency Key Performance Parameters. The P&E Special Meeting will also…

  • The GreenGov Challenge

    or4green
    25 Oct 2009 | 12:28 pm
    Earlier this month, President Obama signed an Executive Order on Federal Sustainability that extends a previous Executive Order (#13423, discussed near the bottom of this prior post). The new order sets goals for federal agencies in emissions, reduced fossil fuel usage, water management, etc. Along with the Executive Order, the Whitehouse has launched the GreenGov Challenge in which federal employees submit sustainability ideas to be voted on by other federal employees. The top ideas are then passed on to key sustainability figures at each agency. Thousands of ideas have already been…

  • Twitter

    or4green
    18 Oct 2009 | 12:21 pm
    This blog now has a twitter account under the user name @or4green. The feed can be also found at the bottom of the greenOR.org main page (as long as Twitter’s servers are up). I will occasionally put brief items there, mostly related to this blog. I tried following the recent INFORMS annual meeting remotely via twitter through the #informs09 hash tag. Sometimes people mentioned good talks they attended. But otherwise, there was not much to glean from these reports. Maybe it is the 140 character limit, or the newness of the media. We’ll see what happens at INFORMS 2010.

  • INFORMS 2009 and green O.R.

    or4green
    11 Oct 2009 | 9:23 am
    As you might expect, there is a lot of green O.R. content at the 2009 INFORMS annual meeting. Three of the plenaries touch on sustainability: Socially and Environmentally Responsible Supply Chains by Hau L. Lee (Stanford), Better Smarter Electricity Markets: Efficiently Capturing Wind, Rain and Fire by Richard P. O’Neill (FERC), and A Banquet of Consequences: Adventures in Climate Policy Modeling by John Sterman (MIT). Sterman, known in part for his work at the intersection of system dynamics and nonlinear dynamics & chaos including key studies of the beer game, has recently turned…
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    Matching Supply with Demand

  • The diamond supply chain

    mswd
    27 Oct 2009 | 12:39 pm
    Some retailers like to vertically integrate. For example, in clothing the two large players (Gap, Inditex/Zara) are vertically integrated into production (though not to fabric production). Other do not. For example, in athletic shoes (Nike/Adidas), the firms like to outsource production and do not reach all of the way back into the production of materials (such as cows for leather). The Internet giant, Amazon, doesn’t make the stuff it sells (I suspect it outsources production of the Kindle) and the physical world giant, Wal-Mart, also primarily sticks to retailing. The supply chain…

  • Capacity shortages of H1N1 vaccine

    mswd
    21 Oct 2009 | 6:21 pm
    Have you been able to get your H1N1 vaccine? Probably not – it has been widely reported that there are delays in the distribution of this vaccine. The interesting question is why? Reading a bunch of articles on this topic doesn’t shed a whole lot of light. But one figure jumps out at you – as reported in WSJ (10/19/09 – Delay Undercuts H1N1 Vaccine Campaign), the U.S. government has ordered 251 doses from 5 manufacturers. The current U.S. population is just over 300 million, so they have ordered enough to vaccinate over 80% of us. To put this in perspective, the U.S.

  • Volatility in autos – and the demise of brand loyalty

    mswd
    21 Oct 2009 | 5:25 pm
    Any casual observer to the auto industry can sense that brand loyalty has been declining. But the following graphic, posted in today’s NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/business/21auto.html) illustrates how dramatic the decline has been: So what does this mean for strategy? Clearly, this has interesting implications for marketing (does it mean you have to do more advertising or less?).  But it also has interesting implications for operations. Logic suggests that if brand loyalty decreases, market shares should be more volatile – customers will move quickly to products…

  • It isn’t your father’s PC industry anymore

    mswd
    18 Oct 2009 | 9:59 am
    My first PC was an IBM PC with an Intel 8088 microprocessor, two floppy disk drives and a whopping 64K of RAM (not 64MB or 64G, the 64,000 variety) – and it cost about $4000 in 1985 (but my father worked for IBM so we got it for the employee discount price of something like $2700). HP is currently selling a laptop through WalMart for $298 (or $148.47 in 1985 dollars, http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl).  The PC industry has gone through many stages in which one firm was on top. Apple started it, then IBM took over. IBM tripped in the early 90s and Dell took over. Dell started to…

  • A great operations management blog … check it out!

    mswd
    6 Oct 2009 | 4:45 am
    Our friends at Kellogg, Marty and Gad, are writing their own blog on operations management … And here is the link:  http://operationsroom.wordpress.com/ Their style is very similar to ours (and maybe better!) – comment on current events as they pertain to operations management, especially the teaching of operations management.  This will be a great resource for people looking for examples to illustrate points (or for people looking for new research ideas).
 
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    Maximize Productivity with Industrial Engineer and Operations Research Tools

  • Legal issues with Data Visualization: AT&T and Verizon "Map For That"

    Larry
    4 Nov 2009 | 10:31 am
    CmdrTaco of Slashdot has a recent entry on AT&T sues Verizon over "Map For That" Advertising. CmdrTaco has a good point in that this story is about a lawsuit over data visualization. Sure there has been litigation in the past with false advertising. Yet this lawsuit is pointing to a topic that Operations Research practitioners take a great interest. Data visualization is often seen as a great tool for comparison. I remember first seeing this TV ad from Verizon and thinking how amazed the difference in coverage between the two carriers. Data visualization can have a great impact on the…

  • GLPK 4.40 released today

    Larry
    3 Nov 2009 | 5:49 am
    Andrew Makhorin, lead developer of the GNU Linear Programming Kit project, released the latest version of GLPK 4.40 today. Some of the following enhancements include...New API routines. Mostly with graphs.New branching and MIP heuristicsAnd of course some bug fixesAs described by Andrew, GLPK is intended for solving large-scale linear programming, mixed integer linear programming, and related problems. GLPK is written in ANSI C and is organized as a callable library.IEOR Tools also had a feature on GLPK on how to use it in the Windows environment as IEOR Tools tutorial: Using GLPK in Windows.

  • IBM to open health analytics center in Dallas

    Larry
    30 Oct 2009 | 7:58 am
    IBM is opening a Health Analytics Solution Center in Dallas, TX as announced by the Dallas Morning News. It will employ 100 analytics and technology consultants in the regional area.This is an interesting deal for Dallas as it may have ramifications for EDS and Perot Systems, Dell's new aquisition, which are both based in the Dallas area.Yet from an Operations Research and Analytics point of view the most interesting excerpt from the article is this...IBM did not specify how much it would invest in Dallas, but it plans to invest more than $10 billion companywide to build its capabilities…

  • Operations Researcher predicts Yankees to win World Series

    Larry
    28 Oct 2009 | 5:57 am
    Bruce Buckiet of NJIT predicts that the Yankees are going to win the World Series as covered by Science Daily. Bruce's model predicts a 70 percent chance that the Yankees will beat the Phillies. You can follow Bruce's predictions on his website http://m.njit.edu/~bukiet/baseball/playoffs09.htm. Bruce has game to game predictions for the best of seven series including the probably outcomes of each possible starting pitcher.Baseball is no stranger to Operations Research. Michael Trick is a member of the Sports Scheduling Group that assists MLB in scheduling their games for the past three years.

  • IBM to use Operations Research for war on terror

    Larry
    14 Oct 2009 | 6:08 am
    According to a report from BusinessWeek IBM has won a contract with the U.S. Special Operations Command to apply their analytical analysis. There is a long standing of tradition of the U.S. military using Operations Research to help optimize its operations, as the article alludes.More interestingly that this article demonstrates is that IBM is increasingly becoming a go-to company for Operations Research services. This no doubt is an objective of IBM as a whole with their recent ILOG aquisition. I would be willing to bet that there will be more interesting news from IBM in the future.
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    IFORS

  • 3rd International Conference of Iranian Operations Research Society

    5 Nov 2009 | 12:18 am
    The Iranian Operations Research Society(IORS), is honored to invite everyone engaged in research, teaching, business, or public services related to Operational Research to attend the 3rd Conference on Operational Research, which will be held in Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran.

  • Call for Papers - International Symposium on Combinatorial Optimization, March 24-26, 2010 Hammamet, Tunisia

    26 Oct 2009 | 8:06 pm
    An International Symposium on Combinatorial Optimization will be held in Hammamet, Tunisia, March 24-26, 2010. The symposium aims to bring together researchers from combinatorial optimization, and from related fields of  operations research and linear and integer programming.

  • 24th Mini EURO Conference

    21 Oct 2009 | 3:09 pm
    We are pleased to announce that the 24th Mini EURO Conference on Continuous Optimization and Information-Based Technologies in the Financial Sector (24th MEC-EurOPT-2010), will be held in Izmir University of Economics, Izmir, Turkey, on June 23-26, 2010.

  • IFORS Represented in the International Symposium on OR

    21 Oct 2009 | 5:04 am
    IFORS President Elise del Rosario was on hand to welcome participants of the 8th International Symposium on Operations Research and Its Applications (ISORA09), held from Sep 20 to 21, 2009 in Zhangjiajie China. An APORS-supported annual meeting, the conference was attended by over 120 participants.

  • CALL FOR PAPERS: 3rd Global Conference on Power Control and Optimization (PCO'2010)

    16 Oct 2009 | 4:31 pm
    2-4 February 2010, Gold Coast, AustraliaCourtyard by Marriott Surfers Paradise ResortCnr. Surfers Paradise Blvd. & Hanlan Street Surfers ParadiseQueensland 4217 Australia  
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    RENeW

  • E-Z Pass and Infant Health -- Keep the Traffic Moving and Improve Health!

    6 Nov 2009 | 4:25 am
    I have devoted years of research and teaching to transportation, logistics, and networks, and the associated methodologies that can help in forecasting traffic flows and, what economists call negative externalities, which, in the case of traffic, include both congestion as well as pollution.My two books that focus specifically on environmental issues are: Sustainable Transportation Networks and Environmental Networks: A Framework for Economic Decision-Making and Policy Analysis, the latter co-authored with K. K. Dhanda and P. Ramanujam. These two books develop a spectrum of models and…

  • Management of Water Resources, Optimization and Simulation

    5 Nov 2009 | 4:46 pm
    Tomorrow, November 6, 2009, we will be hosting Professor Richard Palmer, who is Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UMass Amherst, in our Fall 2009 UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series. He will be speaking at 11:00AM in the Isenberg School of Management and more information about Professor Palmer and his presentation, which will focus on optimizing water reservoir operations, can be found here.Professor Palmer is relatively new to UMass Amherst having come from the University of Washington in Seattle. He received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University, which,…

  • Celebrating Sports, the World Series, and the Isenberg School of Management

    5 Nov 2009 | 4:39 am
    Sports are an activity that brings people together -- from the players to their families, the coaches and staffs, and, of course, the fans. Sports illustrate the best in all of us, from meeting tough challenges, under, sometimes, grueling and difficult conditions, to outstanding teamwork and good sportsmanship. They also provide a means of escape and entertainment (as great literature does).Being a professor at the Isenberg School of Management, among its many positives, is that, besides such terrific departments as Finance and Operations Management (my home), Accounting, Management, and…

  • Knowledge networks and Cyber security

    3 Nov 2009 | 5:54 am
    Last week the Computer Science Department at UMass Amherst hosted a national meeting on Cyber security. UMass Amherst was selected as the site for this meeting by the Institute for Information Protection (I3P.org), which is a consortium of leading universities, national laboratories, the Department of Homeland Security, and nonprofit organizations.More information about the two day meeting is available here.The presentation that I prepared for this meeting was entitled: Identification of Vulnerabilities in Fragile Network Systems: Transportation Networks, the Internet, Financial Networks, and…

  • Another Critical Link is Closed and Citizens Pay the Price

    1 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am
    With all the attention the closure of the San Francisco Bay bridge has been getting you may have missed another bridge closure on the opposite side of the US -- that of the Lake Champlain bridge that connects Vermont with New York State. The bridge was closed on October 16, 2009, and it is uncertain whether it will even be able to reopen after the winter. It is a truss bridge and its design is similar to the Minneapolis bridge that collapsed in August 2007, with 13 deaths resulting. The Lake Champlain bridge is a critical link. Its closure has resulted in commuters having to add 90 minutes to…
 
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    OR at Work

  • Go GREEN!

    25 Oct 2009 | 8:23 am
    Last week I had a presentation at the ORTEC user conference, together with one of my friends form the Antwerp University, Patrick Schittekat. Also Walther Ploos van Amstel was there with a nice speech on the diminishing elasticity in logistics. Our subject was on how to be green from an environmental perspective but still be competitive. We state that instead of waiting for the governments to come up with measures to reduce emissions, companies should re-think their supply chain now. That way companies can turn going green from a liability into an asset and are well prepared for the future.

  • What about Risk?

    26 Sep 2009 | 8:09 am
    One of the hot topics in the Dutch news these weeks is the financial disaster the construction of a metro line in Amsterdam is causing. A quantative based risk assessment would have lead to better estimation of the financial risks upfront and better risk mitigation strategies during the project.At the start of the project the total investment for the metro line was estimated to be €430 million. Based on this estimation the Amsterdam council decided to go ahead with the plan. Besides the relief the metro would bring to the dense traffic in the centre of the city, making it more healthier to…

  • Strategic value of OR

    19 Aug 2009 | 4:23 am
    In the CPMS group of INFORMS on LinkedIn a discussion was started on the contribution Operations Research can have in Strategic Planning. This discussion triggered me to think about if and when Operations Research offers added value in boardroom decision making. You might think that because the name of our profession starts with Operations, that it is the only area of business where it can be applied. My experience is different. This year’s winner of the Edelman award is a perfect example of how OR can support Strategic Planning. HP has used Operations Research to transform their complete…

  • Does Operations Research sell?

    25 May 2009 | 4:27 am
    No, it does not; nobody is looking for an Operations Research specialist. What companies seek is a solution, not a tool or skill. We will have to convince them that Operations Research can lead them to a solution. In the current climate of economic downturn companies seek strategies to survive. They have many questions like how to cut costs, improve profitability or want to review their total supply chain. Questions that require the support of Operations Research to solve them. Although companies need support, it does not imply that it is easy to get a new project. There is no standard…

  • Hip Hip Hooray!

    19 Apr 2009 | 3:17 am
    This year it has been 50 years since a Dutch Mathematician Edsger W. Dijkstra published his famous algorithm to solve the shortest path problem. Time for a celebration! Although not always visible, we depend on the algorithm every day. The algorithm has many examples, starting from the obvious application in the satellite navigation system in your car. But also less straight forward applications like in Internet routing protocols like IS-IS and OSPF, without it no Internet and you would not be able to read this blog entry.Edsger Dijkstra was a brilliant computer scientist, who strang enough…
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    Google Blog Search: Operations Research

  • Without Operations Research, Gridlock!

    Michael Trick
    5 Nov 2009 | 5:04 pm
    In many applications, it can be difficult to measure the effect of an operations research project. For instance, my colleagues and I provide schedules for Major League Baseball. What is the value added by the operations research we do? ...

  • Open Source = Geek?

    Michael Trick
    5 Nov 2009 | 7:10 am
    I am involved in an operations research open source endeavor, COIN-OR. Part of COIN-OR is convincing companies that open source is not too nerdy or experimental. There are lots of good reasons to use open source software. ...

  • 3rd International Conference of Iranian Operations Research Society

    unknown
    5 Nov 2009 | 12:18 am
    The Iranian Operations Research Society(IORS), is honored to invite everyone engaged in research, teaching, business, or public services related to Operational Research to attend the 3rd Conference on Operational Research, which will be ...

  • Legal issues with Data Visualization: AT&T and Verizon "Map For That"

    Larry
    4 Nov 2009 | 10:31 am
    If there is anything to learn from this is that Data Visualization might be more important than we take for granted in Operations Research. As practitioners we often are trying to determine ways to improve our soft skills to help ...

  • score one for OR! « Punk Rock Operations Research

    Laura
    2 Nov 2009 | 1:20 pm
    What is interesting about the press release is that it actually promotes the field of operations research. Maybe the grassroots efforts to promote OR are working! You can read the press release for yourself, but check out the plug for ...
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    WordPress Tag: Operations Research

  • Zauberformel für Partner-Vermittlungen entdeckt

    nigecus
    2 Nov 2009 | 8:26 am
    Gerade gefunden auf BodySpaceSociety, Love – the Swiss way: sociologists want to “optimize the marri

  • Erroneous Assumptions

    acolucci
    27 Sep 2009 | 7:12 am
    War Games During the days of the Cold War the danger of nuclear proliferation by the hands of the “Red” Soviets weighed heavy over those within the United States Army and the United States government. The impending threat of an nuclear attack and/or war lead to the movement for the monitoring and prediction of enemy military plans by calculation and record of all options within a possible military attack. This threat lead to the eventual research, development and implementation of what is termed in De Landa’s article as war games.  Two war theoreticians named Jomini and Clausewitz…

  • Re-engineering Human decision making mind.

    Rahim Thawer
    16 Sep 2009 | 11:05 pm
    Waterbury Financial Strategies Inc CEO / Founder Rahim Thawer post this week “Re-engineering Human decision making mind.” There is no apprehension how much a human mind can comprehend and generate constant flow of ideas and thoughts.  However, just like anything on this earth, it has to be trained to a degree when it comes to making simple or complex decisions either involving everyday activities or forming future strategies.  Human factors engineering is a science that plays a vital role in decision making for the minds of many individuals whether they are in a manufacturing plant or…

  • Entrepreneurs’ Survival Kit for 2009: Capital Budgeting Decisions with Limited Budgets.

    Rahim Thawer
    13 Sep 2009 | 7:47 pm
    Waterbury Financial Strategies Inc CEO / Founder Rahim Thawer post this week “Entrepreneurs’ Survival Kit for 2009: Capital Budgeting Decisions with Limited Budgets.” The world is currently experiencing a chaos in not only the financial sectors but all industries across the line and the Entrepreneurs of tomorrow will have to embrace the fact that the tough times are not over just yet.  A number of economists have formed their theory and methodologies in regards to this recession as to when it is going to be over, but the reality is, there are too many factors that contribute with too…

  • Optimal Account Balancing II

    Rod Carvalho
    28 Jul 2009 | 8:26 pm
    Consider a network of agents, each owing money to and being owed money by other agents. The debts are represented pictorially by the weighted directed graph which I called an IOU graph on my previous post on this topic. The IOU graph representing this network is an ordered triple , where is the node set (each node of the IOU graph represents a different agent), is the edge set (containing elements), and is a weight function that assigns positive weights to each edge in . Each directed edge of graph is an ordered pair , where is the edge’s tail and is the edge’s head. If then node owes…
 
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