{"id":1022,"date":"2010-01-03T15:11:29","date_gmt":"2010-01-03T19:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/?p=1022"},"modified":"2010-01-03T15:11:29","modified_gmt":"2010-01-03T19:11:29","slug":"the-magical-places-operations-research-can-take-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/01\/03\/the-magical-places-operations-research-can-take-you\/","title":{"rendered":"The Magical Places Operations Research Can Take You"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Art Benjamin<\/a> of Harvey Mudd College has an article in this week’s Education Life section<\/a> of the New York Times<\/em> where he gives ten mathematical tricks.<\/p>\n

I first met Art in the late 80s at, I believe, a doctoral colloquium sponsored by ORSA\/TIMS (now INFORMS<\/a>). Art was clearly a star: he won the Nicholson Prize<\/a> (Best Student Paper) in 1988. If he had stuck with the “normal path” of being an academic researcher, I have no doubt that he would now be well known in operations research academia.<\/p>\n

But his real passion was lightning calculation and other forms of mathematical magic and in keeping with that path, he has made himself even better known to a much broader audience. He has published three books aimed at the general audience<\/a>, including one that was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection (is this unique in operations research?). He has an amazing act that he performs for a wide range of audiences.<\/p>\n

His research has moved out of operations research\u00a0 into combinatorics and combinatorial games (though these areas have a lot of overlap with OR), where he publishes prolifically<\/a> and has two books aimed at professionals. His book “Proofs that Really Count”<\/a> (along with Jennifer Quinn) is a great introduction to combinatorial proofs.<\/p>\n

Art is another example of the variety of paths you can take after an operations research degree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Art Benjamin of Harvey Mudd College has an article in this week’s Education Life section of the New York Times where he gives ten mathematical tricks. I first met Art in the late 80s at, I believe, a doctoral colloquium sponsored by ORSA\/TIMS (now INFORMS). Art was clearly a star: he won the Nicholson Prize … Continue reading “The Magical Places Operations Research Can Take You”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-or-in-the-press","category-people"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}