OR/MS Today articles from April 2003

OR/MS Today archives from April 2003

Wacky world of OR. (Inside Story).(Editorial)
April 1, 2003... We all know that Americans take their football way too seriously. The same could be said for most of the rest of the world about the brand of "football" known as soccer. In fact, when it comes to fanaticism, the soccer "hooligans" of the world...

Marketing the profession. (President's Desk).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... In my President's Desk column in the February issue of OR/MS Today, I said that I was very bullish on our profession and gave a number of reasons for my optimism. I further stated that we can't take the growth or even the continued existence of...

Guided tour of PubsOnLine. (Informs Online).(INFORMS offers it)
April 1, 2003... If you are an INFORMS member but don't subscribe to our electronic journals, you may think that there is nothing worth seeing at INFORMS PubsOnLine. But if you haven't visited the site before, it's worth a stop on your ventures through the...

One world for OR/MS. (Cyberspace).
April 1, 2003... A German shepherd walks into a telegraph office and writes out the message that he wants to send, "Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof!" The telegraph clerk points out that there are nine words in the telegram and with the cost...

The truth about project managers. (Was it Something I Said?).(Column)
April 1, 2003... As Yogi Berra said, "It's like deja vu all over again." Two years ago this month, I filled this space with a few hundred words about project managers, but this is such a big topic that there's a lot more to say. So here we go again. I'm...

Marvelous Mary's parable. (Oracle).(Column)
April 1, 2003... The OR/MS analyst was frightened and shaken. The phone call had come an hour earlier, interrupting a lively discussion of computer performance measurement. Now he was in the emergency room of a hospital near his home. His wife, pale and also...

Trust at least some of us. (Letters to the Editor).(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2003... To the Editor: I found Arnie Barnett's "The Last Word" ("Trust No One at the Airport," OR/MS Today, February 2003; www.lionhrtpub.comlorms/orms-2-031 frlastword.html) rather surprising and in sharp contrast to his usual wise counsel. It...

Brilliant proposal. (Letters to the Editor).(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2003... To the Editor: I think Gene Woolsey's proposal ("Forum," OR/MS Today, February 2003; www.lionhrtpub.com/orms/orms2-03/frforum.html) that INFORMS position itself as "process improvement" is brilliant, and, like many other brilliant ideas,...

Dominizing Venus. (Forum).(Mathematics Awareness Month is discussed)
April 1, 2003... If you ask the proverbial man on the street to tell you what's happening in the month of April, there's a good chance you'll get one of the following answers: spring, showers, taxes, the start of baseball season. But if you ask a mathematics...

1990 study warned of shuttle problem. (Real World).(Columbia space shuttle tragedy)
April 1, 2003... In 1990, more than a decade before the Columbia space shuffle tragedy, operations researchers and INFORMS members M. Elisabeth Pate-Cornell and Paul S. Fischbeck wrote a report that concluded that foam debris dislodged during flight could...

Computers predict their own future. (Real World).(IBM develops computing technology)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Computer software has been used to predict everything from hurricanes and financial markets, and now IBM says it has come up with a way to predict what is about to happen next with the computers themselves. IBM recently announced it has...

Logistics, Asia-Pacific style: Singapore-based institute encourages "out-of-the-box" thinking when stock answers just won't work. (International OR).(Logistics Institute-Asia Pacific)
April 1, 2003... ASIA PACIFIC (AP) IS A REGION OF CONTRASTS and contradictions, a region where logistics are not always logical, a region where those who practice logistics have to quickly reorient their thinking. In many places in China, for example, forget...

Right on queue: OR models improve passenger flows and customer service at Vancouver International Airport. (International OR).
April 1, 2003... AS OPERATIONS RESEARCH PROFESSIONALS WE spend a considerable amount of time traveling to client sites, academic meetings and university seminars. After Sept. 11, 2001, these trips became longer as heightened security measures led to new and...

Thirsting for consensus: multicriteria decision analysis helps clarify water resources planning in South Africa. (International OR).
April 1, 2003... THIS PAPER REFLECTS MORE THAN A DECADE OF experience in applying concepts from multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) to problems of water resource planning in the Republic of South Africa (RSA). The most important starting point is to...

'FIDO': telecom's best friend; OR-based software helps design local-access optical fibre networks in New Zealand. (International OR).(Fibre Diversity Optimizer)
April 1, 2003... THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY, WHICH uses techniques ranging from queueing and simulation to mixed integer programming, is one of the success stories of applied operations research. The problem of designing local access fibre networks, for...

Batty over cricket: OR knows the score when it comes to the "ins" and "outs" of complicated sport. (International OR).
April 1, 2003... MANY PEOPLE'S PERCEPTION OF CRICKET MAY be of English villages and delightful cricket grounds, depicted in the accompanying photo of Shireshead Cricket Club, near Lancaster. Cricket, however, is an international sport that can involve big...

As the world turns; state of the profession: global survey reflects universal concerns countered by an optimizer's optimism for the future. (International OR).
April 1, 2003... DIFFERENT CUSTOMS AND CULTURES IMPACT the way operations research is taught and practiced around the world, but commonalities always seem to dominate any international discussion of the state of the profession. For example, U.S.-based INFORMS,...

EURO/INFORMS Meeting in Istanbul: 'New Opportunities for OR'. (Informs News).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... The first EURO/INFORMS Joint International Meeting of the new millennium will be held in Istanbul July 6-10, 2003. The conference has received more than a thousand abstract submissions and is still accepting submissions until May 1. All...

INFORMS 2003: Combined Colliqyua. (Informs News).
April 1, 2003... The 2003 INFORMS Combined Colloquia will be held Oct. 17-18 in Atlanta, immediately preceding the INFORMS Annual Meeting. There are two colloquia - the Doctoral Colloquium and the Teaching Effectiveness Colloquium. The Doctoral Colloquium...

Operations research in the news. (Informs News).
April 1, 2003... As INFORMS President Tom Cook describes in his column ["President's Desk' page 4], INFORMS is launching a major new initiative to market our profession. INFORMS has just hired the Cambridge, Mass., marketing firm PJA, which specializes in...

Fourth Annual INFORMS Case Competition. (Informs News).
April 1, 2003... INFORMS is pleased to announce its Fourth Annual Peer-Reviewed Case Competition. This competition is jointly sponsored by INFORMS Education Committee, INFORMS Case and Teaching Materials Initiative, and INFORMED. It is designed to encourage the...

Edward H. Kaplan was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest professional distinctions accorded an engineer. (People).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Edward H. Kaplan was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest professional distinctions accorded an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made "important contributions to engineering theory and practice,...

Robert G. Sargent, professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer science at Syracuse University; received the 2002 Lifetime Professional Achievement Award from the INFORMS College on Simulation (INFORMS-CS). (People).
April 1, 2003... Robert G. Sargent, professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer science at Syracuse University; received the 2002 Lifetime Professional Achievement Award from the INFORMS College on Simulation (INFORMS-CS). The award was presented...

Terry Rockafellar of the University of Washington has accepted a part-time appointment, starting spring 2003, as adjunct research professor with the Center for Applied Optimization in the ISE Department at the University of Florida. (People).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Terry Rockafellar of the University of Washington has accepted a part-time appointment, starting spring 2003, as adjunct research professor with the Center for Applied Optimization in the ISE Department at the University of Florida. Professor...

Richard Soland was recently honored for his many years of dedicated service to Omega Rho, the OR honor society, with a surprise celebration at George Washington University. (People).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Richard Soland was recently honored for his many years of dedicated service to Omega Rho, the OR honor society, with a surprise celebration at George Washington University. With numerous colleagues and students looking on, Professor Soland...

Meetings.
April 1, 2003... INFORMS Meetings 2003 May 4-6 INFORMS Conference on OR/MS Practice Creating Value in the Extended Enterprise Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort & Spa Phoenix, Ariz. Chair: Grace Lin IBM T.J. Watson...

Calendar.
April 1, 2003... 2003 May 25-26 Annual meeting of ORSIS The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel The Israeli OR society will hold its annual meeting under the auspices of the Department of Statistics, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. ...

Vaccination policy in the large and in the small(pox). (The Last Word).
April 1, 2003... On Dec. 13, 2002, following months of often acrimonious debate, President George W. Bush announced his decision to vaccinate 500,000 military personnel against smallpox, and also to begin vaccinating civilian first-responders as a step toward...