Passing of Joan Wingo

The field of operations research is full of unsung heros: people who make the field better by doing their jobs with enthusiasm, creativity, and skill. If you have published in Operations Research over the last six years, or if you have read and admired papers in that journal, you will have seen the work of Joan Wingo, Managing Editor of Operations Research. Joan worked with Editor-in-Chief Larry Wein to make Operations Research run, and run well. I worked with Joan over the last few months on transition issues with the new editorial board.

Joan, sadly and untimely, passed away February 13. Her obituary notice contains some thoughts of her friends, coworkers and loved ones. We, as a field, owe her a great deal.

New Editors at Operations Research

The INFORMS journal Operations Research has a new editorial board, led by Editor-in-Chief David Simchi-Levi. David asked me to take on the area of OR Forum. I was hesitant to take on an editorial duty (handling papers has turned out to be an Achilles heel of mine), but the opportunity to handle papers that inspire discussion and controversy was too much to turn down. Here is the area statement:

The OR Forum area invites work that challenges the reader to consider and evaluate the status of past, present, or future prospects and challenges within the field of operations research. Possible submissions include critical reviews of research in a specialized field, closely reasoned commentary on the practice within an area, analysis of prospects for operations research broadly, or any other area where a substantive, significant work will clarify and illuminate research and practice. Published work will often be accompanied by supplemental pieces that enhance or dispute the theses developed.

An online forum will provide opportunity to continue the discussion after publication. Papers that address prospects in areas not traditionally covered by Operations Research are strongly encouraged, as are provocative papers that take a strong stand on policy and practice issues. The arguments made in the paper should not be casual or speculative, but should be based on a firm foundation consistent with publication in a professional journal. Survey papers are appropriate providing such papers go beyond a listing of who wrote what to include a critical appraisal of the research and the prospects for the future. The work should be accessible and of interest to a significant portion of the
readership of Operations Research. Authors are encouraged to contact he Area Editor early in the process of developing their work to determine suitability for consideration in this area.

Any thoughts for suitable articles?

PhD salaries

Forbes magazine has an article about the lack of mathematically trained US workers. Most of the article is about outsourcing, but the issue of starting salaries came up:

A person fresh from graduate school with a Ph.D. in operations research can make $90,000 at SAS Institute–far less than the $150,000-plus salaries top MBAs can command. “Yes, fine, we need to pay more,” Steve Odland, CEO of Office Depot admitted.

Well, kinda… First, a fresh MBA rarely makes $150,000: the average Tepper MBA graduate is closer to $90,000. Second, the lifestyle of those who make the high amounts in terms of stress, travel, and so on is pretty rotten, at least by my standards. Finally, there are lots of fresh Ph.D.s in OR making more than $90,000, often teaching those same MBAs!

Not to say that Ph.D.s should make lots of money (I am one of them myself!), but that doesn’t seem the most dire aspect: it is really the lack of supply of interesting jobs that allow the true use of an OR Ph.D.

Doing research already done?

The New York Times has a nice article about how research is often rediscovered. The lead begins about operations research:

In 1996, Rakesh Vohra, a professor at Northwestern University, and his colleague Dean Foster published “A Randomized Rule for Selecting Forecasts,” a paper in the journal Operations Research. It illustrated how a random investor could outperform a group of professional stock pickers simply by following a “buy and hold” investment strategy.
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Alain Pilon

It was important research, the authors believed, until they learned that the same discovery had been made at least 16 times since the 1950’s. And no one, Dr. Vohra said, ever realized they were not doing original work.

As a referee, there are certain things in sports scheduling that I get quite often (generally some variation of de Werra’s work on minimum break scheduling) and I recently went a long way on a paper before de Werra pointed out to me that the results were included in a somewhat more obscure publication of his. I wonder if online search will make it easier to find these duplicate results before it makes the literature?

Happenings in Cork

I have just returned from a site visit to the Cork Constraint Computation Centre (4C: it’s a pun, don’t you know) in Cork Ireland, where I am on the advisory board. Ireland is a country that seems to have its government investments set up well. A few years ago, they a identified Gene Freuder as someone they would like to attract and made him a very nice offer. Gene is one of the (or perhaps the main) founders in the area of constraint programming, and he has put together an extremely impressive lab. Lots of activity, both in fundamental research and in industrial outreach. The lab isn’t perfect (more OR!), but it is very, very good. If you are learning more about constraint programming, this lab’s site is a good place to start.

Additional Online info at Business Week

There is an additional article online (only) associated with the “Math will Rock Your World” article in Business Week. Entitled Search Advertising by the Numbers, the article concentrates on the problem of bidding on keywords. Here is a quote:

Khan, an accountant by training, looks at the process like a linear programming problem. That may sound exotic to mathophobes, but the concept is simple. He sets a goal that he aims to maximize. In Khan’s case, that’s revenue. Then he factors in the constraints, such as cost per keyword.

This can get complicated. If he bids for the word “loan,” for example, he competes with much of the lending industry. That drives up the price. What’s more, it’s a big, broad word, which means the results are much more complex than a far cheaper targeted keyword phrase such as “Tuscaloosa mortgage.”

“If we can get one dollar out of an auto loan, we can get $20 if we do a mortgage loan,” Khan says. “A keyword like ‘loan’ can deliver either of the two products. So should we buy the keyword based on potential of auto loan or mortgage loan?” He has his team do the math

As always, the article doesn’t go into any real detail of models or algorithms, but it does make our field much more visible.

Does your library have all the INFORMS Journals?

INFORMS is running a grass-roots effort to get more libraries to carry INFORMS journals. They have a neat setup that you can check if your (university) library carries every journal. You can even email your librarian to encourage subscriptions.

Most libraries are cutting back on journals, partially due to some extremely high prices on journals. INFORMS journals, being published by INFORMS, are quite reasonably priced, but of very high quality. Every library should have them!

Sad News from India

From the Indian Express:

Terror struck an international conference at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) campus on Wednesday night killing a retired Mathematics professor from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, M.C. Puri, and seriously injuring four others including one of the inventors of the Simputer, Prof Vijay Chandru from IISc.

The attack was, according to eyewitness accounts, carried out by a lone gunman who wielded an AK-47 and threw hand grenades. The attacker was driven away in a white Ambassador car immediately after the attack, eyewitnesses said.

All major cities in south India have been put on high alert after the incident.

The other injured persons have been identified as Dr Pankaj Gupta from Delhi, P Patel, a lab assistant at the Cadila Lab in the IISc campus, and a woman identified only as Sonia, an assistant professor at IIM, Lucknow.

‘‘All the injured have been ruled to be out of danger,’’ Additional Commissioner of Police H C Kishore Chandra said.

Delegates at the International Conference on Operations Research Applications in Infrastructure Development and the 38th Annual convention of Operation Research Society of India (ORSI) were proceeding from IISc’s National Science Seminar Complex to the Satish Dhawan auditorium for an AGM of the ORSI at around 7:30 p.m. when the attack took place.

Full Story

Vijay Chandru is a co-author of mine, and my thoughts are with him, the others injured and the family of Prof. Puri.