{"id":1553,"date":"2011-11-09T16:51:41","date_gmt":"2011-11-09T20:51:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/?p=1553"},"modified":"2011-11-09T16:51:41","modified_gmt":"2011-11-09T20:51:41","slug":"getting-ready-for-charlotte-and-first-blog-entry-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2011\/11\/09\/getting-ready-for-charlotte-and-first-blog-entry-there\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting ready for Charlotte, and first blog entry there"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am getting ready for the INFORMS Conference coming up next week in Charlotte<\/a>. \u00a0As I generally do, I will be guest blogging at the conference (along with more than a dozen others: great lineup this year!), so my blog entries will appear there<\/a> (often with a copy showing up here). \u00a0I have put together my first entry, entitled “Hoisted on Operations Research’s Petard” <\/a>(a petard is a small bomb; \u00a0if a military engineer had his bomb explode prematurely, he would be hoisted into the air):<\/p>\n

\n

For \u2019tis the sport to have the enginer
\nHoist with his own petard, an\u2019t shall go hard<\/p>\n

Hamlet,<\/em>\u00a0Act 3, Scene 4<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am greatly looking foward to this year\u2019s\u00a0INFORMS Annual Conference in Charlotte<\/a>. \u00a0There is nothing like getting together with 4000 of my closest friends, raising many a coffee (and other liquids) in toasting the successes of our field.<\/p>\n

I could see the successes of operations research over the last couple of days as I tried to change my flights and hotel in reaction to some family issues. \u00a0I had booked everything months ago, paying a pittance for the flight and getting the conference rate for the hotel. \u00a0Of course, trying to rebook things three days in advance was a different story: \u00a0$150 change fees, along with quadrupling of airfare was the opening bid, with the opportunity to pay about six times the airfare if I wanted to fly at a time when humans are normally awake. \u00a0 And I\u2019m not sure why this happened, but the hotel took the chance to increase my daily rate by $10, even though I just knocked a day off my reservation. \u00a0The conference suddenly became a lot more expensive, just because my wife pointed out that if I don\u2019t rake the leaves on Saturday, when will it ever get done!<\/p>\n

I know who to blame for all this: \u00a0operations research, of course. \u00a0The subfield of \u201cRevenue Management\u201d makes change fees and differential pricing a science. \u00a0And that field is one of the great success stories of operations research, as shown by such things as the string of\u00a0Edelman finalists<\/a>\u00a0that focus on revenue management. \u00a0So, while I rue the extra expense that operations research has caused me, I can take solace in knowing that I will eventually gain far more due to the overall success of our field.<\/p>\n

See you in Charlotte!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am getting ready for the INFORMS Conference coming up next week in Charlotte. \u00a0As I generally do, I will be guest blogging at the conference (along with more than a dozen others: great lineup this year!), so my blog entries will appear there (often with a copy showing up here). \u00a0I have put together … Continue reading “Getting ready for Charlotte, and first blog entry there”<\/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":[13,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conferences","category-informs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553","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=1553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}