Now is the time for college graduations and, in Massachusetts, over the past several days, we have been the scene for numerous ones -- from the UMass Amherst graduations to graduations in Boston and to even the Smith College graduation last weekend at which Arianna Huffington gave the commencement address. And Oprah Winfrey will be speaking at Harvard University's commencement on May 30.Last, year, I was honored to give the commencement address at the Master's degree graduate commencement ceremony at the University of Gothenburg's School of Business, Economics and Law on June 14, 2013. My…
Operations Research
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Most Topular Stories
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Preparing a Graduate Commencement Speech -- From the Isenberg School of Management to the School of Business, Economics and Law in Sweden
RENeW21 May 2013 | 5:39 am -
Crowdsourcing the Travelling Salesman
Michael Trick's Operations Research Blog11 Mar 2013 | 12:04 pmDespite some worries, the field of operations research is not exactly sitting on a street corner with a begging bowl. There are lots of people out there who are willing to pay us for what we do. Perhaps not as often as they should, or as much as we deserve, but “operations research” is a legitimate career path. You can get jobs in government, academia or industry; you can work as a consultant; you can write (and get paid for) software; you can even write popular books on the subject! But if you create an operations-research inspired movie, you might find it a rather tough go… -
things I found in my office while packing
Punk Rock Operations Research20 May 2013 | 6:14 amI found a number of things in my office while packing up for UW-Madison. I officially move later this week. Giant Illinois flag (go Illini!) and my office slinky. I’m definitely hanging up my Illinois stuff in my new office, even it upsets the Wisconsin students. Printed announcements for my dissertation defense on April 4, 2006. Also, see the next item. A large filing cabinet full of papers. I definitely killed a small grove of trees, potentially a small forest. It took a few days to move all of the papers out of my office. This was 1 of 3 rounds. Most of the papers were very old… -
Quantum computing and operations research
Michael Trick's Operations Research Blog16 May 2013 | 8:46 amQuantum computing is one of those weird ideas out there that will either change the world or go the way of cold fusion, so I periodically think I need to learn more about the area. I am by no means an expert (or even knowledgeable) in the area. My expertise comes from reading Scott Aaronson’s blog, which makes me as knowledgeable as about about a million other people out there. Seeing a series of papers showing how quantum computing can factor numbers is interesting, until you realize that the number involved are still well in the range of what my eight year old can do in his… -
Video up for Project-Based Learning Webinar
greenOR25 Apr 2013 | 10:29 amThe video for the ORComplete webinar I gave on project-based learning in sustainability and operations research is now available online - ORComplete Webinar 4 . Thanks Ahmet for setting it up. The slides are here. Enjoy!
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Michael Trick's Operations Research Blog
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Quantum computing and operations research
16 May 2013 | 8:46 amQuantum computing is one of those weird ideas out there that will either change the world or go the way of cold fusion, so I periodically think I need to learn more about the area. I am by no means an expert (or even knowledgeable) in the area. My expertise comes from reading Scott Aaronson’s blog, which makes me as knowledgeable as about about a million other people out there. Seeing a series of papers showing how quantum computing can factor numbers is interesting, until you realize that the number involved are still well in the range of what my eight year old can do in his… -
Google Reader and Operations Research
29 Apr 2013 | 9:27 amI has been some months now since Google has announced the end of Google Reader. I have gone through many of the stages of grief (getting stuck at “Anger” for a while) and am now entering acceptance. Personally, I have no problem with Feedly or one of the other readers. But there is another aspect of Google Reader that seems harder to replace. On my blog, I have two sidebar entries: a “From the OR blogs”, giving recent posts from the OR Blogroll, and a listing of the OR Blogroll itself. I think both are pretty useful since they given automatic visibility to… -
The Golden Ticket
27 Apr 2013 | 1:57 amThe Golden Ticket I picked up Lance Fortnow’s new book The Golden Ticket: P, NP and the Search for the Impossible. Lance is chair of the School of Computer Science at my alma mater Georgia Tech (I got my PhD there in Industrial Engineering) and the co-author of the excellent Computational Complexity blog. The title of the book comes from the Willy Wonka story of finding a golden ticket that allows passage into a chocolate factory and a lifetime supply of candy. But golden tickets are rare: how can one find one? Can finding golden tickets be done fast? The difficulty of… -
Crowdsourcing the Travelling Salesman
11 Mar 2013 | 12:04 pmDespite some worries, the field of operations research is not exactly sitting on a street corner with a begging bowl. There are lots of people out there who are willing to pay us for what we do. Perhaps not as often as they should, or as much as we deserve, but “operations research” is a legitimate career path. You can get jobs in government, academia or industry; you can work as a consultant; you can write (and get paid for) software; you can even write popular books on the subject! But if you create an operations-research inspired movie, you might find it a rather tough go… -
Doing work on Metaheuristics and Optimization/Constraint Programming?
15 Feb 2013 | 4:47 amI’m putting together a track at the upcoming 10th Metaheuristics International Conference. The conference will be held August 5-8, 2013 in Singapore. The conference website is http://www2.sis.smu.edu.sg/mic2013/ The topic of the Track is Metaheuristics and Optimization/Constraint Programming. There has been a lot of work recently on combining metaheuristics with exact methods. I think it is a very exciting area: faster optimization codes and speedier computers make it easier to use optimization or constraint programming as part of a metaheuristic approach to problems. If you have some…
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Punk Rock Operations Research
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things I found in my office while packing
20 May 2013 | 6:14 amI found a number of things in my office while packing up for UW-Madison. I officially move later this week. Giant Illinois flag (go Illini!) and my office slinky. I’m definitely hanging up my Illinois stuff in my new office, even it upsets the Wisconsin students. Printed announcements for my dissertation defense on April 4, 2006. Also, see the next item. A large filing cabinet full of papers. I definitely killed a small grove of trees, potentially a small forest. It took a few days to move all of the papers out of my office. This was 1 of 3 rounds. Most of the papers were very old… -
land O links
17 May 2013 | 12:34 pmHere are a few links: When is the best time to purchase airline tickets? On average, 49 days before your departure for domestic flights, 81 days for international flights. What day of the week is the best for purchasing airline tickets? The weekend, according to a paper published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. When is the optimal time to purchase concert tickets? Usually right before the concert when they may be discounted. This assumes perfect information that is free. After taking the cost of information into account, such as the cost of checking ticket prices every… -
queuing, cutting in line, and social justice
17 May 2013 | 5:44 amPage Six ran a story about wealthy Manhattanites who hire “black-market Disney guides” for $130 an hour (or $1,040 for an eight-hour day) to cut in line for the rides at Disney World. The guides are people with disabilities who, according to Disney rules, are allowed to take up to 6 people to the front of the ride lines. At face value, this may seem like a good trade – people who pay do not have to wait in line. People who do not pay more have to wait. But of course, this is not how we really feel about queuing. This story became popular because hiring guides with disabilities… -
how to use data mining and simulation to win at Jeopardy
15 May 2013 | 7:01 amThe single most lucrative single day prize for any contestant in Jeopardy’s history was indirectly based on data mining and simulation. Roger Craig, who has a PhD in computer science, used data-mining algorithms to train himself on a database of training questions. His source data was The Jeopardy Archive, which has every question and answer from all of the Jeopardy episodes. He parsed the whole site to create one large data set composed on unstructured test data. He reverse engineered the game to identify which categories of questions to study based on how valuable these questions are… -
the day-old bread supply chain
14 May 2013 | 12:05 pmThis is yet another post about the intersection of operations research and my frugality. I occasionally stop by Jimmy John’s to pick up some day-old bread for $0.50 per loaf. I purchase a loaf for each one of my kids and then let them do whatever they want with it for dinner. They love it. Whenever I am in a Jimmy John’s, there is a huge stack of day-old bread. When I try to pick up some day-old bread at the grocery store, there are limited loaves and they disappear quickly. I often have to pay full price. Is there an optimal strategy for how much bread to sell/bake each day? The…
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greenOR
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Video up for Project-Based Learning Webinar
25 Apr 2013 | 10:29 amThe video for the ORComplete webinar I gave on project-based learning in sustainability and operations research is now available online - ORComplete Webinar 4 . Thanks Ahmet for setting it up. The slides are here. Enjoy! -
Project-Based Learning in O.R. & Sustainability – Webinar
22 Apr 2013 | 6:50 pmI will be giving a webinar titled “Project-Based Learning in Operations Research and Sustainability” on Wednesday at 10:00 AM EST on ORComplete.com. To access it, check this page. Here’s the abstract: Operations research (O.R.) is playing an increasingly important role in addressing sustainability challenges such as green-house gas reduction and renewable energy use. In this talk, quantitative sustainability projects that can be utilized in undergraduate courses are described using the lens of descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics recently espoused by the O.R. -
Recent Activity in Green O.R. & Related…
17 Apr 2013 | 7:27 pmSome recent and current activity in green O.R. and related areas: There is great initiative on “Math and Sustainability” over at the “Mathematics and Planet Earth 2013” website. The site is filled with information, lesson plans, reference material and more. Check it out! “Sustainable Production and Service Supply Chains” is the theme of the 2013 International Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems (APMS) held at the Penn Stater Conference Center, State College, Pennsylvania, USA, 9-12 September 2013. The Production and Operations… -
Mathematics and Planet Earth at NJ MAA meeting – call for talks
15 Feb 2013 | 8:07 amHere’s a nice opportunity in the NYC area, deadline is next week: Mathematics and Planet Earth – Mathematical Association of America, NJ Section Spring 2013 Conference The Mathematical Association of America (MAA)-NJ Spring Meeting will have a special contributed paper session on Mathematics and Planet Earth, where participants will give a talk for about 15-20 minutes on their papers. The organizer of the session is calling for papers from graduate students, faculty members and researchers working on any topic(s) related to Mathematics and Planet Earth. All submitted papers will be… -
Vehicle Fleet Comparisons using GREET
23 Jan 2013 | 7:23 pmRecently I was asked to do some calculations to determine whether it made sense for my city of New London, CT to switch from a gasoline-fueled truck fleet to one running on compressed natural gas (CNG). Could this change lower fuel costs and emissions, and have a reasonable payback period? I wrote about the GREET transportation model from Argonne national lab a while back and thought this would give me a good chance to take its fleet footprint calculator for a spin. I found it to be a flexible and relatively user-friendly tool. One of the dangers of these calculators is that the user…
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RENeW
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Preparing a Graduate Commencement Speech -- From the Isenberg School of Management to the School of Business, Economics and Law in Sweden
21 May 2013 | 5:39 amNow is the time for college graduations and, in Massachusetts, over the past several days, we have been the scene for numerous ones -- from the UMass Amherst graduations to graduations in Boston and to even the Smith College graduation last weekend at which Arianna Huffington gave the commencement address. And Oprah Winfrey will be speaking at Harvard University's commencement on May 30.Last, year, I was honored to give the commencement address at the Master's degree graduate commencement ceremony at the University of Gothenburg's School of Business, Economics and Law on June 14, 2013. My… -
Surviving Prejudice as a Woman Programmer and Academic by Losing Yourself in Your Work
19 May 2013 | 5:04 pmToday, we had our Isenberg School of Management PhD picnic in North Amherst on a cool and rainy Sunday afternoon.I always feel that it is very important to show up to such events to support the doctoral students and, despite the weather, it was wonderful to see many of our students enjoying one another's company, conversing with the faculty who showed up (a few actually did), and huddling in the pavilion for some warmth.This was a nice break, despite the unfortunate weather, since I had spent hours working on a plenary talk, Network Economics and the Internet, that I will be giving in Athens… -
Tips on Publishing Journal Articles -- PhD Workshop
18 May 2013 | 12:48 pmI have been busy preparing a series of presentations that I will be giving soon in Europe.The first one I will deliver on June 3, 2013 at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. My presentation is entitled: Reflections of an Experienced Researcher on Presenting and Publishing Quantitative Research, and it is one of several presentations that will be given at the Nordlog Doctoral Workshop as part of the 25th NOFOMA Conference, Gothenburg, Sweden.The full list of invited speakers is below:Dr. Alex Ellinger, editor of the Journal of Physical… -
Be an Advocate for Female Researchers
13 May 2013 | 7:17 amI was (very) pleasantly surprised and pleased when the Editor of a journal in Operations Research recently approached me to suggest names of female researchers who might be added to the editorial board as Associate Editors since the volume of submissions to the journal was growing dramatically.The Editor wrote me since he knows that I care about (and try to act accordingly) promoting the visibility of female researchers and this is clearly a substantive way in which visibility and reputation can both be increased.This got me to thinking about being an Advocate vs. a Mentor, a topic that… -
A Spectacular 2013 UMass Amherst Graduate Commencement
10 May 2013 | 10:22 amIt is a truly gorgeous May day -- simply perfect for the UMass Amherst graduations!This morning we took part in the Graduate Commencement ceremonies at the Mullins Center since my doctoral student, Amir H. Masoumi, who successfully defended his PhD dissertation this past February, was receiving his PhD with a concentration in Management Science from the Isenberg School of Management.The pageantry from the music to the banners and flowers to the faculty and administrators in their caps and gowns along with those receiving their Master's and PhD degrees was perfect.This year…
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OR at Work
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The incredible story of the expected that is not to be expected
11 May 2013 | 8:22 amOnce in a while I get an invitation from my bank to discuss my personal financial situation. Most of the time I ignore these invitations because I know their objective, it’s like this. After reviewing my investments, pension and mortgage the lovely lady (most of the time it is a lady, don’t know why) suggests to change my investment portfolio for better performance and puts a brochure in front of me of a new investment opportunity. Most prominent part of the brochure is a bar chart with the expected return of the investment compared with a couple of other investments (from other… -
Patterns; from tessellations to buying behaviour
1 Apr 2013 | 8:27 amA few weeks ago I was invited by the director of Museum Gouda, Gerard de Kleijn, to give a lecture. Not just a lecture on optimisation but one that would link an item from the museum to my profession. There are many ways in which art and math are related with the obvious topics being the golden ration, perspective, topology and fractals. Walking through the museum with Gerard, having a look at the stained glass windows, the ceramics, the art work from the Haagse School I realised that all had to do with modelling, the kind of think I do all the time using mathematics. The closest link to math… -
Winds of Fortune or Despair?
1 Mar 2013 | 12:48 pmHave you ever been to your local grocery store and get paid at the checkout instead of paying for the contents of your shopping cart? In the European electricity markets this was the case a couple of times in the past few years. Electricity prices turned negative due to excess supply of electricity and low demand. In Europe, electricity comes from various sources. A mix of coal, gas nuclear, hydro and a rising number of wind and solar power plants provide the electricity. Current technology doesn’t allow storing electricity efficiently yet, so demand and supply must be matched at all times,… -
Back to School
20 Jan 2013 | 8:40 amEach year the Dutch Operations Research society (NGB) organizes a seminar together with the Dutch Network on the Mathematics of Operations Research (LNMB). This year we organised the seminar for the 15th time, which traditionally is held in the geographical middle of the Netherlands, Lunteren. In the past few years the central theme for the seminar has been the practical application of Operations Research in a specific area, we had themes like health care, traffic, energy, supply chain optimisation, marketing and humanitarian aid. This year we decided to take a different angle. We wanted to… -
Providing a bicycle for the mind; Mathematical modelling in portfolio decision making
27 Dec 2012 | 7:59 amToday's economy is driven by global uncertainties such as exchange rates, oil and energy prices, layered upon local uncertainties involving individual projects. These uncertainties create an unprecedented number of interdependent risks that hamper high quality decision making. Most Oil & Gas companies lack a consistent approach to modelling these uncertainties and risks, specifically in core decisions like exploration and production portfolio selection. Instead, they typically use averages to represent uncertainties. This leads to a class of systematic errors known as the ‘flaw of…
