OR/MS Today articles from December 2004

OR/MS Today archives from December 2004

The real no-spin zone.(Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences)
December 1, 2004... We don't talk politics in this space, and for good reason. OR/MS Today represents a visible face of INFORMS, a not-for-profit organization charged with promoting the O.R. profession, not politicians. INFORMS, and thus OR/MS Today; rightfully...

Building and selling 'better' mousetraps.(PRESIDENT'S DESK)(President's Page)
December 1, 2004... There is an old saying that if you invent a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door. However, this definitely won't happen if: 1. The world never heard of you, 2. The world doesn't know that you have a better...

Browser Wars: Mozilla vs. MegaCorp.(INFORMS ONLINE)
December 1, 2004... November marked a milestone in the evolution of the World Wide Web: the Mozilla Foundation released version 1.0 of Firefox, their next-generation Web browser, ushering in a renaissance of the Web browser and of competition for Microsoft's...

The science of better what?(CYBERSPACE)
December 1, 2004... Learning without wisdom is like a load of books on a donkey's back. --Japanese proverb If an attractive woman in a bar were to ask me what I do, I would feel stumped in my efforts to impress. So I really appreciate the ongoing efforts...

Eight suggestions for teaching modeling to MBAs.(ISSUES IN EDUCATION)
December 1, 2004... EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the fifth in an occasional series aimed at making management science the best course in the business school. In the October 2003 "Issues in Education" column, I discussed the benefits to the O.R. profession from...

Smart is cheap.(WAS IT SOMETHING I SAID?)
December 1, 2004... The student is infuriated with me. He has come to my office hours to argue with me about the points that I have assigned to him on a homework problem, and he's not getting anywhere at all with this negotiation. With each passing minute, his...

The chicken cannon.(ORACLE)
December 1, 2004... The barbershop was crowded, but the O.R. analyst and the old fellow in the corner spotted each other right away as the O.R. analyst entered the shop. "Hello, George," the analyst smiled and waved. "Hi, Fred," the older man smiled back. He held...

O.R.: the science of better.(FORUM)
December 1, 2004... EDITOR'S NOTE: This is another in a series of updates on the INFORMS-funded campaign to market the operations research profession. As 2005 nears, the INFORMS Science of Better campaign moves into a new, exciting phase of reaching out...

O.R. in Africa needs your help.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is an open letter to the INFORMS membership from Alexis Tsoukias, president-elect of EURO. Dear colleagues, As you may be aware, since 2001, EURO has decided to invest in the promotion of Operational...

The trouble with carpooling.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... To the Editor: Vijay Mehrotra's description of the Casual Carpool ride ("Catalyst for Change: Diversity and Discomfort," OR/MS Today, October 2004) from Oakland to San Francisco is similar to the practice of San Francisco-bound morning...

Spreadsheet approach sought for students.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... To the Editor: In the October 2004 issue of OR/MS Today, the software review of TK Solver 5 mentioned on pages 59-60 a review of Queuing Analyses on TK (QTK) Application. The statement that caught my interest is on page 60 after the...

Study rates top graduate decision programs.(REAL WORLD)
December 1, 2004... A study of 34 graduate school decision programs in the United States rated those at Duke University, Harvard University and Stanford University the leading "prescriptive" programs in the field. The leading "descriptive" graduate programs cited...

Nobel Prize winner published in management science.(REAL WORLD)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... One of the winners of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics, Finn Kydland, published an article in the May 1975 issue of Management Science. His paper: "Hierarchical Decomposition in Linear Economic Models."

'Disturbing' defects in strategy to detect terrorists entering U.S.(REAL WORLD)(Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences )
December 1, 2004... Lawrence M. Wein, the Paul E. Holden Professor of Management Science at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and a member of INFORMS, recently testified before members of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security about the...

INFORMS journals help Business Week rate biz schools.(REAL WORLD)(Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences )(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Business Week tallied the number of articles published in 18 leading scholarly journals to help assess business schools' "intellectual capital" in compiling its 2004 rankings of biz schools. The journals ranged from the Harvard Business Review...

Cleaning up the BCS mess.(REAL WORLD)(Bowl Championship Series)
December 1, 2004... INFORMS member Rick L. Wilson, a professor at Oklahoma State University's College of Business Administration, wants to clean up what he calls the "BCS Mess." The BCS, or Bowl Championship Series, is a controversial ranking system used by...

New model for military operations: technological advances present opportunity for military to shift from command-and-control operations to sense-and-respond Network-Centric Operations in order to meet present-day challenges.
December 1, 2004... BUSINESS LEADERS IN AMERICA HAVE LONG KNOWN THAT BEING ABLE TO ADAPT TO CHANGING ENVIRONMENTS is the sine qua non of success. The evolution in customer needs and habits, in trade regulations, in national and international supply and demand,...

Retail labor scheduling; Store managers face a classic O.R. problem: ensuring optimal staffing to accommodate anticipated sales volumes and customer traffic, while meeting a laundry list of constraints and without blowing the budget.
December 1, 2004... LARGE RETAILERS ARE INCREASINGLY RECOGNIZING that efficient labor management can be a major source of competitive differentiation. In an industry where customer demand fluctuates greatly and workforce availability is equally variable,...

The science of better synergy: president-elect Richard Larson looks to integrate his plan to bolster INFORMS membership through non-Ph.D.s with the ongoing marketing efforts on behalf of "the world's greatest profession.".(Interview)
December 1, 2004... RICHARD C. LARSON OFTEN DESCRIBES operations research as both the "world's greatest profession" and the "world's most important hidden profession." As a recognized world leader on both the academic and practice sides of the O.R. fence, Larson...

Forecasting: predicting your needs; Fifth biennial look at forecasting software indicates "steady-state" of market segmented into several categories.(Software Survey)
December 1, 2004... FORECASTING TIME SERIES DATA continues to be a topic of great interest to OR/MS Today practitioners and academics. The examples and applications are varied and huge. For example, here are some recent forecasting problems I personally worked on:...

Mathematica 5.1: additional features make software well-suited for operations research professionals.(SOFTWARE REVIEW)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2004... In the December 2003 issue, I reviewed Mathematica 5 from operations research professionals' viewpoint [1]. I wrote how version 5 is compelling for O.R. professionals who may have been intrigued by Mathematica software in the past but did not...

Procter & Gamble earns informs prize.(INFORMS NEWS)(Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences)
December 1, 2004... The 2004 INFORMS Prize was awarded to Procter & Gamble for its "integration of operations researcher principles into the decision-making structure of the firm, to tackle issues such as global manufacturing site location and sourcing, inventory...

INFORMS salutes 32 'Fellows'.(INFORMS NEW)(Institute for Operations Research and The Management Sciences)
December 1, 2004... INFORMS honored 32 recipients of the INFORMS Fellows Award at a special luncheon held in conjunctions with the INFORMS meeting in Denver. The Fellows Award recognizes INFORMS members who have made significant contributions to the advancement of...

Wallace wins president's award for societal contributions.(INFORMS NEWS)(Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)
December 1, 2004... William "Al" Wallace, professor of decision sciences and engineering systems at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., received the 2004 INFORMS President's Award for critical contributions to the public sector resulting from his...

INFORMS awards.(INFORMS NEWS)
December 1, 2004... GEORGE E. KIMBALL MEDAL (for distinguished service to the Institute and to the profession) Frank T. Trippi JOHN VON NEUMANN THEORY PRIZE (for fundamental, sustained contributions to theory in operations research) J....

Edward H. Kaplan.(PEOPLE)(Institute of Medicine)
December 1, 2004... Edward H. Kaplan, the William N. and Marie A. Beach Professor of Management Sciences at the Yale School of Management and Professor of Public Health at the Yale School of Medicine, has been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National...

Professor Dorit S. Hochbaum.(PEOPLE)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Professor Dorit S. Hochbaum of the University of California, Berkeley, was awarded a doctor scientiarum honoris causa (honorary doctorate in natural sciences) by the University of Copenhagen at a ceremony that took place on Nov. 11 in the...

Dr. Fred Young Phillips.(PEOPLE)(Maastricht School of Management)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Dr. Fred Young Phillips has been appointed associate dean for MBA, DBA and research programs by the Maastricht School of Management. "We are delighted to have recruited an executive and educator with Dr. Phillips' extensive experience," says...

In memoriam: Robert E. Kalaba.(INFORMS NEWS)(Obituary)
December 1, 2004... Robert E. Kalaba, an applied mathematician associated with the University of Southern California for almost half a century and renowned internationally for his analytical and computational solutions to problems in physics, engineering,...

Meetings.(INFORMS NEWS)(Calendar)
December 1, 2004... INFORMS Meetings 2005 April 17-19 INFORMS Spring Conference 2005 Applying Science to the Art of Business Westin Mission Hills Resort Palm Springs, Calif. Chair: Rina Schneur, Verizon Laboratories ...

INFORMS 2002-2003 financial statements: independent auditors' report.(INFORMS News)
December 1, 2004... March 22, 2004 To the Board of Directors Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences Linthicum, Maryland We have audited the accompanying statements of financial position of the Institute for Operations Research...

An Annotated Timeline of Operations Research: An Informal History.(NEW BOOKS)(Bibliography)
December 1, 2004... "An Annotated Timeline of Operations Research: An Informal History" recounts the evolution of operations research as a new science--the science of decision-making. Arising from the urgent operational issues of World War II, the philosophy and...

Does This Line Ever Move? Everyday Applications of Operations Research.(NEW BOOKS)(operations research method in math education)(Institute for Operations Research and the Management Science Public Awareness Committee)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Since 1996, the INFORMS Public Awareness Committee (PAC) has extended the distinctly O.R. approach to math education from the university down to the high school level by developing teacher instruction modules that provide materials for...

The Sharpest Cut: the impact of Manfred Padberg and his work.(NEW BOOKS)
December 1, 2004... "The Sharpest Cut" is written in honor of Manfred Padberg, who has made fundamental contributions to both the theoretical and computational sides of integer programming and combinatorial optimization. This outstanding collection presents recent...

Introduction to logistics systems planning and control.(NEW BOOKS)
December 1, 2004... Logistics is key to the modern economy. From the steel factories of Pennsylvania to the port of Singapore, from the Nicaraguan banana fields to postal delivery and solid waste collection in any region of the world, almost every organization...

New releases of LINGO, LINDO API.(Lindo Systems Inc's enhanced products)
December 1, 2004... LINDO Systems announced the release of LINGO 9.0 and LINDO API 3.0. These new releases include major solver enhancements to increase speed and reliability on broad classes of linear, integer, quadratic and general nonlinear models. Other...

UTS offers free 'player' software.(Universal Technical Systems)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Universal Technical Systems (UTS) now provides free software for sharing Excel worksheets and mathematical models created in TK Solver 5.0 Premium Edition as part of a new feature set in the math modeling system that allows TK Solver users to...

Mathematica 5.1 handles large-scale data.(mathematical software)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Wolfram Research announced the release of Mathematica 5.1, "the data functions release," the latest version of the science and technology software system Mathematica. Building on Mathematica 5's speed, scope and scalability improvements,...

Decisioneering releases Crystal Ball 7.(Decisioneering Inc.)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Decisioneering, a provider of software and services for risk analysis and optimization, has released Crystal Ball 7. Crystal Ball 7 will allow users greater ability to transform Microsoft Excel spreadsheets into dynamic models that solve...

GEOCOM partners with OPTISOFT.(GeoCom TMS Inc.)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... GEOCOM, architect of A.MAZE, a fleet scheduling optimization and territory design solution, announced that it has contracted a partnership with Mexico's OPTISOFT to promote A.MAZE added-value to Latin American companies operating small and...

Palisade offers PMI credits for @RISK training.(INDUSTRY NEWS)
December 1, 2004... Palisade Corporation recently received accreditation as a Registered Education Provider (REP) from the Project Management Institute (PMI). Now project management professionals who attend Palisade's risk assessment seminars earn valuable...

Math works in the real world: (you just have to prove it again and again).(LAST WORD)
December 1, 2004... Any mathematician plying their trade in the business world cannot help but feel a sense of satisfaction upon reading Michael Lewis' recent book, "Moneyball." Lewis, who penned an insider's look at bond trading in "Liar's Poker" and the...