{"id":1126,"date":"2010-04-22T11:34:12","date_gmt":"2010-04-22T15:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/?p=1126"},"modified":"2010-04-22T11:34:12","modified_gmt":"2010-04-22T15:34:12","slug":"what-is-operations-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/04\/22\/what-is-operations-research\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Operations Research?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over on the suddenly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.or-exchange.com\">active OR-Exchange<\/a>, David Woods <a href=\"http:\/\/www.or-exchange.com\/questions\/274\/quick-definitions-of-or\">asked the question<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What are the best quick definitions describing operations research? The kind that you&#8217;d give to someone if you only had the duration of an elevator ride to describe it&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>David then goes on to answer his question with a fantastic answer:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Operations research is the art and science of obtaining bad answers to questions to which otherwise worse answers would be given.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I love that!  But I&#8217;m not sure that outsiders will really get it.  Paraphrasing Steve Martin, &#8220;I stopped using irony when I realized I was the only one using it.&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;m left with &#8220;Operations Research is about making better decisions through mathematical models.  Say, are you a baseball fan?&#8221; where I hope to squeeze in a story about <a href=\"http:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/?p=623\">operations research and sports scheduling<\/a>.  I&#8217;m hoping for a better line through the answers at OR-Exchange.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over on the suddenly active OR-Exchange, David Woods asked the question: What are the best quick definitions describing operations research? The kind that you&#8217;d give to someone if you only had the duration of an elevator ride to describe it&#8230; David then goes on to answer his question with a fantastic answer: &#8220;Operations research is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/04\/22\/what-is-operations-research\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;What is Operations Research?&#8221;<\/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":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs-and-web"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126","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=1126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}