Category: INFORMS

OR at P&G

Let me be late in the OR blogging game and note that there is a great article on operations research at Proctor and Gamble on bnet. It is wonderful advertising for our field, including phrases like “P&G’s Killer Apps in OR”. INFORMS was strongly involved in the article, with quotes from Past-President Brenda Dietrich and Executive Director Mark Doherty:

P&G, GE, Merrill Lynch, UPS — the list of Fortune 500 companies getting into the OR game is expanding, says Mark Doherty, executive director of the Hanover, MD-based Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS), an OR think tank. “In the private sector, OR is the secret weapon that helps companies tackle complex problems in manufacturing, supply chain management, health care, and transportation,” he says. “In government, OR helps the military create and evaluate strategies. It also helps the Department of Homeland Security develop models of terrorist threats. That’s why OR is increasingly referred to as the ‘science of better.’”

Having sat in on a few too many board meetings, I think calling INFORMS an “OR think tank” is going a little far. But the article does project the very best vision of our field.

Check out another take on the article at Punk Rock Operations Research (and I thought I saw it on another OR blog, but it escapes me at the moment).

End of INFORMS Resources Page?

In 1994 I began collecting links about operations research on the internet.  Of course, it was pretty easy at the time.  There were only about 1000 web servers at all, so there were just a handful of OR links.  But there was also gopher and ftp, so I could put together a pretty good page with 30 or so entries.  Over time, “Michael Trick’s Operations Research Page” grew and grew, encompassing a couple thousand pointers.   It is through that page that I became involved in INFORMS, by becoming the founding editor of INFORMS Online.

In late 2000, I finished my terms as editor, but was then elected President of INFORMS (I suspect MTORP had something to do with that).  At that time, I donated MTORP to INFORMS, where it became the INFORMS OR Resource page.  At the time, it was the second most accessed page at INFORMS (next to the conference page).   I continued to edit the page, primarily because the software made it pretty easy to do.

Over the past few years, I have been thinking that the time for the resource collection is pretty well over.  The page was started long before google, and played an important role when finding information on the web was hard.  With google and its competitors, that is no longer the case.  A quick search can find any page on the web in an instant.  If I want to find something about OR, I go to google, not the OR Resources page.

The page is actually taking more time these days.  Spammers attack the page, and integrating the system in the overall INFORMS Online system is a hassle.  The worst aspect is updating the page.  About 1/3 of the links are no longer valid, but correcting everything needs to be done by hand.  So I am thinking perhaps the time for the system is over.  What do you think?  I see three choices, though I am sure there are more.  I (we) could:

  1. Shut down the page, perhaps replacing it by an edited blog on what’s new on the web in OR (similar to this blog, perhaps).
  2. Continue to limp along about the way we are doing things.
  3. Find someone else to come in, provide direction and excitement and show what a resource pointer collection can really be!

So, I’m interested:  what do you think we should do?

Not at INFORMS

I’m not at this year’s INFORMS meeting.  No, it is not because I am in a snit because it looks like Seattle is going to beat the attendance record Pittsburgh set last year (I predicted it, and predict that Washington will set a new record next year that will take a few years to break).  I’m not going because it is 18 hours of flights away from New Zealand, and I needed to cut back on my travel a bit.

So I won’t be live-blogging the conference.  Laura McLay of “Punk Rock Operations Research” will be there so look for her.  If there are any other OR bloggers at the conference, let me know so I can follow the conference vicariously.

INFORMS and YouTube videos

INFORMS has some videos on YouTube from the recent Edelman Awards. This is great for the field. The three videos are

  1. General OR, and the Edelman Award
  2. The 2007 Award (on more efficient ways to attack prostate cancer)
  3. A detailed video on the 2006 award (Warner Robbins on repairing planes)

So far the videos have been accessed a couple of dozen times each. Pass along the pointers, and let’s get that count up!

Some sightings from INFORMS Pittsburgh

OK, a “real” blogger would have put together a dozen posts from the Pittsburgh INFORMS Meeting. But I guess I am not, since I am just plain exhausted from the meeting and can’t put together any extended words. Suffice it to say, I thought it was terrific. Some glitches naturally (sorry to those who were in Greentree with insufficient transportation: wish I had a mulligan on that!), but overall I was thrilled about the things we had control over: the plenaries, the receptions, the convention center setup, the scheduling. We had 3780 participants, an all-time record for OR conferences. Thanks to all who made that happen!
A few sightings on the web: the “Practical Communist” has some postings and some absolutely amazing pictures.

Procure IQ has a number of posts on the conference, including a summary of President Mark Daskin’s plenary.

I can’t read David’s Space, but he clearly was at the conference (before heading to Chicago) and also has some great pictures.

Navigating an INFORMS Meeting

Well, the INFORMS Pittsburgh Meeting is about to begin. The weather looks like it will be fine (no hurricanes like in Miami a few years back!). It is cool tonight (Saturday) but should get a bit warmer for most of the meeting.

At the Doctoral Colloquium tonight, INFORMS President Mark Daskin made some good points about navigating an INFORMS Meeting. One point that may not be obvious to first-time attendees is that you are very welcome to leave a session in between talks (it is a bit ruder to leave in the middle of a talk, but that is certainly not uncommon). So if you like presentation 1 of a session, and presentations 2 and 3 of a session three doors down, feel free to leave after the first presentation (typically as presenter 2 fiddles with the technology) and change rooms. It is something everyone knows after a few conferences, but even first-time attendees should do this. A second point is that many people attend tutorials of areas they specialize in. The best use of tutorials is to learn something of an area that is not known to you. I admit I check out tutorials in my area (to make sure they refer to me in appropriately reverential tones), but I am really wasting my time: I should either be attending something new or partaking in social capital activities (like having a drink at the bar with friends old and new). My own talk at the colloquium was on social capital and OR, similar to my EURO talk.
For those attending, enjoy the conference! For those not attending, shame on you, and plan for Seattle next year!

Update November 5

Mark has kindly provided his full

Mark’s Two-Page Guide to Navigating the

INFORMS Meeting

With a focus on first-time attendees

Continue reading “Navigating an INFORMS Meeting”

Saul Gass at INFORMS

Saul Gass is one of the great people in OR. In celebration of his 80th birthday, friends and colleagues gathered in Maryland in February for a Festschrift. The book of this celebration is coming out from Springer (Amazon link given, since I can’t find it on Springer: buy it at the conference since often they give a conference discount). Saul will be signing the book from 3-4:30 PM Monday November 6 at the INFORMS Meeting. I bet he would sign some of his other books (like The Annotated Timeline with Arjan Assad, his classic Linear Programming: Methods and Applications reprinted by Dover, or if you are particularly well-heeled, his Encyclopedia of Operations Research with the late Carl Harris) if you asked nicely.