“For S/He’s a Jolly Good [INFORMS] Fellow!”

Further to INFORMS recognitions, now is the time to nominate people for INFORMS Fellow.  I was on the board when plans for the Fellow’s program got underway and I, like many, was a little leery.  Way back in the early 1950s, the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) started a Fellow’s program that led almost immediately to the creation of  The Institute for Management Science (TIMS) by those who were not selected as Fellows (this is an oversimplification, and I wasn’t there:  how old do you think I am!).  I know of many organizations ripped apart by arguments over who gets to be a Fellow and who isn’t.  It is really awful when a Fellows program gets to be a schoolyard argument over who gets to sit in the treehouse.

On the other hand, practically the first question asked for nomination to the National Academy of Science (or Engineering) is “Is the candidate a Fellow of their professional society”.  Without this designation, operations research people are at a disadvantage.  So the Fellows program came in to being (Jim Bean, my predecessor as President of INFORMS, played a big role in designing and implementing the program).

I was fortunate to be President of INFORMS for the inaugural class in 2002, so I got to shake hands with Dantzig, Arrow, and a host of others.  It was a great thrill (forever memorialized in an OR/MS Today article where it looks like all the famous people are shaking hands with a cardboard cutout of me!).   And, while I know there are those who are not Fellows who should be (fewer and fewer every year), the society has seemed to survive this program.

The process for Fellows is now in the hands of the existing Fellows.  They (well, “We” since I became a Fellow a few years back) have put out a call for nominations:

The Fellow Award recognizes members who have made significant contributions to the advancement of operations research and the management sciences. The contributions of a nominee will be evaluated in each of the following five categories and contributions must be outstanding in at least one category: research, practice, management, education, and service. INFORMS will name its tenth set of Fellows at the INFORMS Annual Meeting 2012 in Phoenix, AZ, in October 2012. The nomination deadline is June 30, 2012.

Remember – a maximum of four reference letters, including the letter from the nominator, may be submitted.

[The complete nomination guidelines are at]:http://www.informs.org/Connect-with-People/Fellows/INFORMS-Fellows-Nomination-Procedure

The complete list of current Fellows is at http://www.informs.org/Connect-with-People/Fellows/Fellows-Alphabetical-List

Kimball Medal Call for Nominations

I’m chairing this year’s Kimball Medal Committee.  Here is the call for nominations:

The George E. Kimball Medal is awarded by INFORMS for recognition of distinguished service to the Institute and to the profession of operations research and the management sciences.   The committee for this year’s award is Michael Trick (Chair), Robin Keller, and Steve Robinson.  If you would like to nominate someone (including yourself) please send an email with the name of your nominee along with a brief justification to Michael Trick (trick@cmu.edu) by July 31 for review in August.  The website for the award is http://www.informs.org/Recognize-Excellence/INFORMS-Prizes-Awards/George-E.-Kimball-Medal and past awardees are listed at that site.
The past winners are generally an impressive group with recent winners including Brenda Dietrich, Steve Robinson, Larry Wein, Jim Bean, Mark Daskin, and yours truly (which is how I got to chair this year’s committee).

Sports with a vague Operations Research connection

It is pretty clear that academic administration and blogging are perfect substitutes, at least in regard to time, if not satisfaction.  After having an easy period earlier in the year when I racked up a dozen blog posts, administrative needs sucked up all my time, leading to the buildup of dust-bunnies at Ye Olde Blog.  But it is the end of term, so perhaps I can get things cleaned out.

Let me point out two recent sports-oriented items.  First is a fascinating dynamic map from Slate showing the winning of sports championships in the four major US sports (football, baseball, hockey, and basketball).  The progression is fascinating, and the graphical display gives far more information than the static listing does.  It is a great example of the value of visualization, even if I can’t quite figure out what the value is.  The graphic to the left shows a particularly good year:  1979 when Pittsburgh really was “The City of Champions”.

Second, there were two good articles on sports scheduling.  The first was on NFL scheduling in the New York Times.  Lots of people sent me this, since I’m part of the group that does Major League Baseball Scheduling.  The article does a great job of talking about all difficulties there are in agreeing on a schedule. Ironically, some of these difficulties come from the ease at which it is possible to get NFL schedules.  When it is possible to ask “What if we had Pittsburgh play New England in week 3?” and get back appropriate schedules quickly, it is tempting to ask a near-endless set of questions.  Particularly when there are many interested parties and no particular rules for aggregating preferences.

Baseball scheduling doesn’t provide the same quick response.  Due partially to the size of the schedule (2430 games or 780 series rather than the NFL’s 256 games) but due mainly to the scheduling difficulty of “good trips” (an issue of minimal importance to the NFL since teams return home after almost every game), the turn-around time on MLB schedules is measured in days or weeks, not minutes or hours.  Which brings me to the second article:  an article in the LA Times on baseball scheduling.  It even quotes my partner Doug Bureman:

Bureman, whose company also does the scheduling for several major-college conferences, summed up the job this way:

“We’re kind of in the business of seeking perfection, knowing that you’re never going to get there.”

That is for sure:  we are a long way from perfection!  But this year has been fascinating due to realignment issues:

All of this gets even more jumbled in 2013 when MLB realigns, with the Houston Astros moving to the American League and both leagues having 15 teams. (Currently there are 16 in the NL, 14 in the AL.) Interleague games will then be spread through the season instead of being bunched together around midseason as they are now.

Feeney and her group are currently working on that 2013 schedule, and have found it to be quite a challenge. “We’re still struggling with the format,” she said.

For a sports scheduler, this “struggle” is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and it has been tremendously fun and interesting to work out how that format might work.

In between bouts of academic administration!