ORMS Today August 2016 by Lionheart Publishing Inc.

INNOVATIVE EDUCATION: Back-to-school special issue

August 2016

Volume 43 • Number 4 ormstoday.informs.org

• NPS: Learning by solving real problems

What quant grads

need to know Stairway to success: Advice for students (and their professors) in a dynamic, data-driven world

• EMBAs: The value of ‘simple analytics’ • How to talk to senior decision-makers • Profiles of 2016 UPS Prize finalists • Mandate for STEM educators everywhere • Teaching O.R., analytics in Mongolia • Study: Gaps in European O.R. education

Contents August 2016 | Volume 43, No. 4 | ormstoday.informs.org

24 On the Cover Stairway to success Re-evaluating education: Annual special issue on innovative education takes another look at what students really need to succeed and how best to teach it. Image © ximagination | 123rf.com

Sp ecial iss u e :

Innovative Education 24

Learning by solving real problems

Define analytics through students’ eyes

Owl speaks lion

By Thomas W. Lucas At the Naval Postgraduate School, students learn O.R. by doing O.R. that helps enhance the security of the U.S. and its allies.

By Peter Bell No matter how we define “analytics,” for EMBA students, often simple “analytics” adds value and this defines “success.”

By Jeff Kline Do’s and don’ts: How to communicate analytical results to senior decision-makers … and how not to.

de partm e nt s

6 8 11 12 14 16 18 20 23 62 64

Inside Story President’s Desk INFORMS in the News Issues in Education PuzzlOR INFORMS Initiatives Forum Viewpoint Letters to the Editor Classifieds ORacle

UPS Prize finalists’ profiles By Ramayya Krishnan, et al. Trio of academic departments/programs recognized for effective preparation of O.R. students aiming at the practice sector.

2 | ORMS Today

August 2016

ormstoday.informs.org

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August 2016 | Volume 43, No. 4 | ormstoday.informs.org

INFORMS Board of Directors

President Edward H. Kaplan, Yale University President-Elect Brian Denton, University of Michigan

Past President L. Robin Keller, University of California, Irvine

Secretary Pinar Keskinocak, Georgia Tech

Treasurer Sheldon N. Jacobson, University of Illinois Vice President-Meetings Ronald G. Askin, Arizona State University Vice President-Publications Jonathan F. Bard, University of Texas-Austin

Vice President- Esma Gel, Arizona State University Sections and Societies

Vice President- Marco Lüebbecke, Information Technology RWTH Aachen University

Innovative Education 40 Mandate for STEM educators

By Dursun Delen Closing the analytics skill gap: providing students with the background needed for tomorrow’s analytics jobs.

Vice President- Jonathan Owen, CAP, General Motors Practice Activities Vice President- Grace Lin, International Activities Institute for Information Industry

Vice President-Membership Susan E. Martonosi, Professional Recognition Harvey Mudd College Vice President-Education Jill Hardin Wilson, Northwestern University Vice President-Marketing, Laura Albert McLay, Communications and Outreach University of Wisconsin-Madison Vice President-Chapters/Fora Michael Johnson, University of Massachusetts-Boston

Editors of Other INFORMS Publications

Decision Analysis Rakesh K. Sarin, University of California, Los Angeles

O.R. without borders

By Mendsaikhan Sonomtseren, Altantsetseg Sodnomtseren & Khuslen Zorigt INFORMS President Ed Kaplan, others join Mongolia’s strategic efforts to emphasize analytics in its education system.

Study of European O.R. education By Jeroen Beliën, et al. Preliminary insight reveals and addresses misalignment of student education with labor market demand.

n ews

Editor’s Cut Anne G. Robinson, Verizon Wireless

Information Systems Research Ritu Agarwal, University of Maryland I NFORMS Journal on Computing David Woodruff, University of California, Davis

INFORMS Online Kevin Geraghty, 360i INFORMS Transactions Jeroen Belien, KU Leuven on Education

Interfaces Srinivas Bollapragada, General Electric Global Research Center Management Science Teck-Hua Ho, National University of Singapore Office of the Deputy President (Research and Technology)

Manufacturing & Service Christopher S. Tang, Operations Management University of California, Los Angeles

Marketing Science K. Sudhir, Yale University

Mathematics of Operations J. G. “Jim” Dai, Cornell University Research

Operations Research Stefanos Zenios, Stanford University

Organization Science Zur Shapira, New York University

Service Science Paul P. Maglio, University of California, Merced Strategy Science Daniel A. Levinthal, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Transportation Science Martin Savelsbergh, Georgia Institute of Technology

53 Annual Meeting set for Nashville 56-57 President-elect statements

58 In Memoriam: Howard Raiffa

59 In Memoriam: Salah Eldin Elmaghraby 4 | ORMS Today

August 2016

60 People

61 Winter Simulation Conference

61 Meetings

Tutorials in Operations J. Cole Smith, University of Florida Research

INFORMS Office • Phone: 1-800-4INFORMS

Executive Director Melissa Moore

Headquarters

INFORMS (Maryland) 5521 Research Park Dr., Suite 200 Catonsville, MD 21228 USA Tel.: 443.757.3500 Fax: 443.757.3515 E-mail: informs@informs.org

ormstoday.informs.org

Welcome to Analytic Solver ® Cloud-based Simulation Modeling that Integrates with Excel

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Comprehensive Risk and Decision Analysis Tools. Use a point-and-click Distribution Wizard, 50 probability distributions, automatic distribution fitting, compound distributions, rank-order correlation and three types of copulas; 50 statistics, risk measures and Six Sigma functions; easy multiple parameterized simulations, decision trees, and a wide array of charts and graphs.

nonlinear optimization, simulation optimization, stochastic programming and robust optimization. And it’s a full-power tool for forecasting, data mining and text mining, from time series methods to classification and regression trees, neural networks and more, with access to SQL databases and Spark Big Data clusters.

Optimization, Forecasting, Data and Text Mining. Analytic Solver is also a full-power, point-and-click tool for conventional and stochastic optimization, with powerful linear and mixed-integer programming,

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Inside Story

Peter Horner, editor

peter.horner@mail.informs.org

OR/MS Today Advertising and Editorial Office

Quants: supply & demand

Send all advertising submissions for OR/MS Today to: Lionheart Publishing Inc. 506 Roswell Street, Suite 220, Marietta, GA 30060 USA Tel.: 888.303.5639 • Fax: 770.432.6969

President

Welcome to another special issue of OR/MS Today dedicated to innovative education. As with all of the previous such special issues, the goal is to shine the spotlight on departments, programs, courses, initiatives, trends, surveys and best practices that are moving the educational dial and enhancing the education of students who aspire to become tomorrow’s leaders in the O.R./analytics field. As we’ve mentioned in this space many times as have countless other media outlets, the demand for “data scientists” (however you care to define the term) is expected to far outpace the number of qualified candidates going forward. The often-quoted 2011 McKinsey study predicted that by 2018, the gap will approach 300,000. If you’re a recently minted quant grad looking for an industry position, that’s the good news. If you earned your degree from one of the top O.R./analytics programs in the country, your toughest decision might be deciding which of multiple offers to accept. So ever ything is rainbows and ponies for quants in the job market, right? Well, not exactly. We can’t ignore a little thing called supply and demand; the job marketplace wants to level out over time. Does that apply to data scientists and analytics professionals of all persuasions? We shall see. In response to the marketplace, we’ve already seen dozens if not hundreds of analytics master’s degree programs crop up at universities throughout the United States and around the world in just the past decade. Certainly the ramped up production of analytics professionals will close the gap between supply and demand. Will it be enough to meet the demand? Time will tell. At the very least, as more and more analytics grads enter the job market, the

competition for choice jobs will increase, forcing job seekers to step up their game and differentiate themselves from their peers. Likewise, universities offering analytics programs and the professors who teach the courses will have to step up their games to remain competitive and attractive to students with ever-growing expectations. If you happen to be a STEM Ph.D. interested in an academia gig, you already know – or will soon find out – that the competition is fierce. According to a recent article in The New York Times, the supply of STEM P h . D. s l o o k i n g f o r t e nu re - t r a c k professor positions far exceeds the demand. The article quotes Richard Larson, an O.R. professor at MIT and a former president of INFORMS, who says the engineering school at MIT often gets 400 applicants for every open assistant professor job. But that’s a story for another day. Meanwhile, back to the good news. This issue is packed with informative feature articles, columns and opinion pieces on the state of O.R/analytics education that should be of interest to students and professors alike, no matter what track they’re on. The coverage ranges from a personal, inside look at the Naval Postgraduate School’s O.R. program (page 24) to Mongolia’s efforts to emphasize analytics in its education system (page 44). In between, you’ll hear from a business school professor who defines analytics through the eyes of his EMBA students (page 28), learn how to communicate with decision-makers (page 32), read best teaching practices from a tr io of UPS Prize finalists (page 36) and consider a mandate for STEM educators (page 40). ORMS — Peter Horner, editor peter.horner@mail.informs.org

6 | ORMS Today

August 2016

John Llewellyn, ext. 209 john.llewellyn@mail.informs.org

Editor Peter R. Horner peter.horner@mail.informs.org Tel.: 770.587.3172

Assistant Editor Donna Brooks

Contributing writers/editors Douglas Samuelson, Matt Drake, John Toczek

Art Director Alan Brubaker, ext. 218 alan.brubaker@mail.informs.org

Online Projects Manager Patton McGinley, ext. 214 patton.mcginley@mail.informs.org

Assistant Online Projects Manager Leslie Proctor, ext. 228 leslie.proctor@mail.informs.org

Advertising Sales Managers Sharon Baker sharon.baker@mail.informs.org Tel.: 813-852-9942 Aileen Kronke, ext. 212 aileen@lionhrtpub.com

Reprints Kelly Millwood, ext. 215 kelly.millwood@mail.informs.org

OR/MS Today Committee James Cochran, chairman

INFORMS Online http://www.informs.org

Lionheart Publishing Online http://www.orms-today.org OR/MS Today (ISSN 1085-1038) is published bimonthly by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). Canada Post International Publications Mail (Canadian Distribution) Sales Agreement No. 1220047. Deadlines for contributions: Manuscripts and news items should arrive no later than six weeks prior to the first day of the month of publication. Address correspondence to: Editor, OR/MS Today, 506 Roswell Street, Suite 220, Marietta, GA 30060. The opinions expressed in OR/MS Today are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of INFORMS, its officers, Lionheart Publishing Inc. or the editorial staff of OR/MS Today. Membership subscriptions for OR/MS Today are included in annual dues. INFORMS offers non-member subscriptions to institutions, the rate is $62 USA, $79 Canada & Mexico and $85 all other countries. Single copies can be purchased for $10.50 plus postage. Periodicals postage paid at Catonsville, MD, and additional mailing offices. Printed in the United States of America. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to OR/MS Today, INFORMS-Maryland Office, 5521 Research Park Dr., Suite 200, Catonsville, MD 21228. OR/MS Today copyright ©2016 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved.

ormstoday.informs.org

Welcome to Analytic Solver ® Cloud-based Data and Text Mining that Integrates with Excel

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Full-Power Data Mining and Predictive Analytics. It’s all point-and-click: Text mining, latent semantic analysis, feature selection, principal components and clustering; exponential smoothing and ARIMA for forecasting; multiple regression, logistic regression, k-nearest neighbors, discriminant analysis, naïve Bayes, and ensembles of trees and neural networks for prediction; and association rules for affinity analysis.

distributions, 50 statistics and risk measures, rankorder and copula correlation, distribution fitting, and charts and graphs. And it has full-power, point-and-click optimization, with large-scale linear and mixed-integer programming, nonlinear and simulation optimization, stochastic programming and robust optimization.

Simulation/Risk Analysis, Powerful Optimization. Analytic Solver is also a full-power, point-and-click tool for Monte Carlo simulation and risk analysis, with 50

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President’s Desk

‘Me m

b e r-in- C h ie f Me m o’

Ed Kaplan

INFORMS President president@informs.org

The summer of O.R.: sharing stORies and telling it like it is! MiC’s summer of O.R. began with a visit to Ulaanbaatar to introduce basic operations research methods to Mongolian statisticians teaching in universities and working in government agencies (see page 44). It continued with state-of-the-art talks (and great company) at the national meeting of the Operations Research Society of Israel (ORSIS) in Ma’ale Hachamisha, a beautiful setting in the hills west of Jerusalem. The next stop was a workshop on pattern matching at Bar Ilan University (with applications ranging from scheduling to Talmudic logic), after which it was time for the 2,000+ attendee 28th European Operational Research Society (EURO) conference in Poznan, Poland. There were, of course, additional exciting O.R. conference opportunities this summer, including the INFORMS inter national meeting in Hawaii and the MSOM conference in New Zealand. Taken together, all of this points to the plethora of activity in our field. It also indicates that we don’t seem to have too much trouble getting together to talk amongst ourselves and share ideas. But while we feel connected to our academic and professional colleagues around the globe, what about looking to the outside? INFORMS members produce great work and research, and are trusted authorities in our fields. You are published in journals, quoted in the media, and called upon by many different types of organizations for your expertise. And as the world’s largest operations research society, INFORMS has a special duty to promote your work, for to paraphrase our strategic plan, “INFORMS will identify, recognize and promote the 8 | ORMS Today

August 2016

work of our members to show the value their science and practice brings to society.” How does INFORMS tell our stORies? The INFORMS professional staff tr ies to keep up proactively with member accomplishments in research that have proven (or could prove) newsworthy. Other ways the staff promotes the membership include responding to and creating Really big “shew”: MiC Ed Kaplan gets in character during opportunities to talk with educational trip to Mongolia. media, and finding speaking engagements or other ways to increase visibility and external input to searches for publically available engagement. information about members’ activities Nonetheless, keeping up with the acusing publicly available tools such as tivities and expertise of the many thouGoogle Scholar and Google News. This sands of INFORMS members for this would enable the generation of user effort is a very real challenge. While we friendly and on-demand INFORMS can effectively search for members who Subject Matter Expert (SME) Reports. publish in our journals and speak at our There are various ways this could conferences, at present we can’t efficiently work. For example, a search could be or effectively do so from non-INFORMS triggered by keywords pertaining to a sources, academic or otherwise. Of course, recent news event (e.g., “airport security,” INFORMS also relies upon member “third-party candidate,” “Zika virus,” self-reporting of new breakthroughs, “Uber pricing,” etc.). These keywords media appearances, government service, would then be used in conjunction with non-INFORMS awards or other recogthe INFORMS membership data to nition, but such reporting is incomplete. search for INFORMS members who We need and want to do more. How are connected to the keywords in either might we systematize things a bit better? the news or the scholarly literature (over We have an idea. We want to create a a defined time frame). This would be new automated way to search for member especially helpful in surfacing INFORMS expertise to match the right members member research appearing in nonwith the right “visibility” opportunities. INFORMS journals that pertains to the We envision that this new automated topic of interest, and could also in short tool will use the proprietary data from notice surface media mentions of our the INFORMS member database as members that otherwise might not be ormstoday.informs.org

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Member-in-Chief Memo

reported to us. A different search could inventory members’ new publications or media mentions over a defined time period (monthly, for example), and then classify the results by topic to see which areas of activity are of highest frequency while staying on the lookout for new ideas. Such a capability would enhance our outreach and engagement activities by enabling INFORMS staff to easily search on any issue or topic to identify and promote our members as subject matter experts. Timely knowledge of our members’ accomplishments will enable INFORMS staff to spread the wORd about our field by “telling it like it is!” A potential added benefit may be to enable our members to more easily search for the broader works of their peers or for members with specific expertise. Again, the novelty involves using the INFORMS member database as input in conjunction with other search terms or parameters

All of INFORMS’ strategic goals speak to outreach and awareness – letting the world know about our members, O.R., and its impact and value for decision-makers, organizations and society.

to produce INFORMSmember-specific searches. So, how might we develop this new tool? This sounds like an analytics challenge, so why not turn to some of our INFORMS in-house exper ts? We propose to hold a one-time, crowd-sourced competition to design and build the INFORMS SME Report Generator. The competition would only be open to INFORMS members. Participants would design the report and the search interfaces and features. As envisioned, the report’s users should be able to easily run the report and search as they commonly do in a modern web-based or cloud environment. INFORMS will establish a new ad hoc committee to dot the “i’s” and cross the “t’s” (that is, to develop the specific technical requirements and to oversee this

one-time competition).We hope our tool will be operational in early 2017. All of INFORMS’ strategic goals speak to outreach and awareness – letting the world know about our members, O.R., and its impact and value for decision-makers, organizations and society. This competition and resulting tool will help accomplish these goals. Keep your eyes peeled for more detailed announcements as we continue looking for ways to promote our field and help INFORMS tell our stORies! ORMS

Dynamic Ideas llc New TiTles

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Abhijit A. Pol and Ravindra K. Ahuja

Each topic covered is illustrated through examples and hands-on tutorials. Each chapter contains several hands-on exercises for additional practice. This book is ideally suited as a textbook but can also be used as a supplementary reference book or a self-study manual. The book Web site, www.dssbooks.com, contains supplementary material for students and instructors including additional case studies. AUTHORS: Abhijit A. Pol is a researcher in the Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the University of Florida, Gainesville. His research focus is in the area of databases with special interests in approximate query processing and physical database design. Ravindra K. Ahuja is a professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is also the President of Innovative Scheduling, Inc., which specializes in building decision support systems for planning and scheduling problems arising in the field of transportation.

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August 2016

Among its special features, the book: ■

Develops the theory of integer optimization from a new geometric perspective via integral generating sets

■

Emphasizes strong formulations, ways to improve them, integral polyhedra, duality, and relaxations

■

Discusses applications of lattices and algebraic geometry to integer optimization, including Gröbner bases, optimization over polynomials and counting integer points in polyhedra

■

Contains a unified geometric treatment of cutting plane and integral basis methods

■

Covers enumerative and heuristic methods, including local search over exponential neighborhoods and simulated annealing

■

Presents the major methods to construct approximation algorithms: primal-dual, randomized rounding, semidefinite and enumerative methods

■

Provides a unified treatment of mixed integer and robust discrete optimization

■

Includes a large number of examples and exercises developed through extensive classroom use

Optimization over Integers

“For over a quarter of a century, Urban Operations Research has been a primary source for introducing thousands of students to the world of operations research applications. Anyone interested in how a city can improve its critical services will find basic and advanced ideas clearly explained and grounded in practicality. Of special interest is the rare discussion on “Implementation.” Here, the novice student and the practiced researcher will find sound advice that will help ensure that their mathematical models will make a difference. Case in point, ‘Beware of the Vanishing Advocate.’” Saul I. Gass—Professor Emeritus, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park

“Of all the courses I took as an undergraduate and graduate student at M.I.T., Urban Operations Research undoubtedly had the greatest impact on my career and on my way of thinking about the world around me. To this day, over thirty years after taking the course, I often find myself referring to the text for insights and solutions to problems. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in operations research at any level.” Mark S. Daskin—Bette and Neison Harris Professor of Teaching Excellence, Northwestern University

“Having gone through course after course on the theoretical underpinnings of OR, this book opened my eyes as a student to the impact that OR modeling can have on real-world problems. It showed me how rigorous analysis can be applied to address fundamental problems in society. It’s an absolute classic in the field.” Patrick T. Harker—President, University of Delaware

“I still use my totally worn-out copy of the first edition of Urban Operations Research, bought when I was a graduate student at MIT. Dick and Amedeo’s book belongs on the desk of all operations researchers, not only those interested in efficient resource allocation of urban services. It is one of the finest examples of the power of quantitative modeling. The text is a classic and I am delighted to see it re-edited.” Patrick Jaillet—Edmund K. Turner Professor and Department Head, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, MIT

“Urban Operations Research introduced me to realistic and practical modeling of very complex problems. What I learned from Amedeo and Dick changed the way I think and my approach to problem solving, setting the direction for my career. I have been using my loose-leaf, pre-publication copy ever since 1978 when I took the course.”

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PART V—CASE STUDIES: This part presents several case studies of decision support systems arising in different application settings including Online Book Store, Portfolio Management and Optimization, and Television Advertisement Allocation.

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Developing Web-Enabled Decision Support Systems

PART I—PRINCIPLES OF GOOD DATABASE DESIGN: This part of the book covers entity-relationship diagrams, creating relational databases, and normalizing databases.

Developing Web-Enabled Decision Support Systems

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Using Access, VB .NET, and ASP .NET

Developing Web-Enabled Decision Support Systems is a comprehensive book that describes how to build data-driven, Web-enabled decision support systems using a Microsoft Access database, VB .NET, and an ASP .NET framework, and illustrates it using several case studies arising in Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, and Business. The book contains five parts:

Bertsimas Weismantel

Pol Ahuja

Developing Web-Enabled

Decision Support Systems Data, Models, and Decisions

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“Urban Operations Research is a tremendous resource for improved modeling and decision making in today's dynamic business environment—both an essential text for preparing students and a valuable reference for experienced OR practitioners."

Dimitris Bertsimas is the Boeing Professor of Operations Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Robert Weismantel is Professor of Mathematics in the University of Magdeburg, Germany.

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ormstoday.informs.org 4/8/16 8:07 PM

INFORMS in the News

Compiled by Ashley Kilgore and Olivia Schmitz

Sports, airport lines and STEM careers INFORMS members, initiatives and journals continue to make news on a wide range of topics in a variety of forums. Following are recent examples of “INFORMS in the News”: Understanding sports analytics An “Insights Weekly” item from Ugly Research highlighted an article in the June issue of OR/MS Today by INFORMS SpORts members Gary Cokins, Walt DeGrange, Stephen Chambal and Russell Walker. The OR/MS Today article demonstrates that sports analytics can be more easily understood by applying classification techniques. This includes analytics for major league players and managers, as well as individual and amateur sports, and franchise and venue management. - Insights Weekly, June 30

Making a purchase? Not doing research can cost you Ayelet Israeli of Harvard Business School, and Eric Anderson and Anne Coughlan, both of Northwestern University, share data from their research published in an article in the INFORMS jour nal Marketing Science regarding whether the manufacturer’s minimum advertised price (MAP) is in fact the lowest price for which an item can be purchased. They found that both unauthorized and authorized retailers will price below MAP, unauthorized retailers as much as 50 percent of the time and authorized retailers up to 20 percent of the time. They also shared that when making a purchase, doing sufficient research can mean an additional 5 percent to 13 percent discount below MAP. - INFORMS.org, June 10

The analytics of airport lines In an interview on Channel3000.com’s “Live at Four,” Laura McLay, an associate professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and INFORMS vice president of market-

ing, provides insight on the scientific and analytical perspective that can help minimize the frustration of airport lines. - Channel3000.com, May 31

University of Wisconsin-Madison welcomes INFORMS student chapter After attending several INFORMS conferences and recognizing the opportunities that they provide for communicating and collaborating with peers, a group of graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison established an INFORMS student chapter on campus. “Being a part of INFORMS is a really good opportunity to step back from what you’re doing specifically in your research, and learn about what other students are doing, learn new methods, and be social with other graduate students,” said Erkin Otles, an industrial and systems engineering graduate student. - University of Wisconsin-Madison, College of Engineering, May 24

University of Arkansas recognized for academic contribution to O.R. practice On May 25, the journal Interfaces published “Rothkopf Ranking,” recognizing practice-oriented operations research between 2009 and 2015. Among the recognized was the University of Arkansas, ranked 19th for their student-focused contributions to the field through research tools and procedures to improve the way companies do business. - University of Arkansas, News, July 15

Tight job market for STEM Ph.D.s seeking university professor careers With a growing surplus of Ph.D.s in fields such as biology, chemistry and

science, it’s becoming more difficult for individuals with an advanced degree to obtain tenured university positions. While there is a high demand for doctorate students in industry, the demand for academRichard Larson ics in those same fields is low. According to [INFORMS member and former INFORMS president] Dr. Richard Larson, an operations research professor at MIT, and his colleagues, the demand shifts can be predicted by calculating Ro’s for various fields. The article stated, “Ro is the average number of Ph.D.s that a tenure-track professor will graduate over the course of his or her career, with an Ro of one meaning each professor is replaced by one new Ph.D. The highest Ro is in environmental engineering, at 19.0. It is lower – 6.3 – in biological and medical sciences combined, but that still means that for every new Ph.D. who gets a tenure-track academic job, 5.3 will be shut out. In other words, Dr. Larson said, 84 percent of new Ph.D.s in biomedicine ‘should be pursuing other opportunities’ – jobs in industry or elsewhere, for example, that are not meant to lead to a professorship.” - The New York Times, July 14

Employing the traveling salesman problem to optimize Pokémon Go With the location-based augmented reality game Pokémon Go exploding in popularity, [INFORMS Fellow] William Cook, professor at the University of Waterloo, applies the traveling salesman problem to create the most efficient routes in several U.S. cities and universities for Pokémon players to reach all the game stops in that area. ORMS - University of Waterloo, The Traveling Salesman Problem, July 13 Ashley Kilgore (akilgore@informs.org) is the public relations manager at INFORMS. Olivia Schmitz (oschmitz@informs.org) is the marketing coordinator at INFORMS.

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Issues in Education

By Mihai Banciu

Teaching Effectiveness Colloquium set for Nashville On behalf of the INFORMS 2016 organizing committee, it is my pleasure to invite you to participate in the Teaching Effectiveness Colloquium (TEC), to be held Nov. 11-12, the Friday and Saturday preceding the INFORMS Annual Meeting in beautiful Nashville, Tenn. TEC is part of the 2016 INFORMS Combined Colloquia (together with the Doctoral Student Colloquium and the New Faculty Colloquium). As in the previous years, TEC brings together a select number of faculty experts and interested participants, with the goal of discussing current “best practices” regarding pedagogical effectiveness and to provide an environment for networking. We particularly invite interested graduate students about to enter the academic market, as well as current faculty members in the OR/MS/analytics community who are interested in sharpening or expanding their teaching skills. My first interaction with TEC was in my last year of graduate school when I participated in both TEC and what was then the Future Academician Colloquium. I confess that I do not remember much about the Future Academician session (except that it was impressed on us that we all need to write papers, publish them in Management Science and forget about teaching – at least until we’re tenured), but I do remember that I was engaged with TEC throughout the day. Part of this is the obvious information asymmetry:As doctoral students in high-intensity research institutions we receive plenty of mentoring about how to conduct quality research, but somehow when it comes to teaching – either a recitation session or a large introductory undergraduate class – we’re given a book and the marching orders to “go teach.” 12 | ORMS Today

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will address different aspects of incorporating effective teaching techniques in any undergraduate or graduate curriculum. From active learning strategies to practical lessons on optimization, from case-based teaching to leveraging social media in the classroom, we hope that you will find something interesting and applicable! In order to give you a better sense of the faculty participants, here is a brief

The Teaching Effectiveness Colloquium will be held Nov. 13-16 in Nashville. Image © elen1 | 123rf.com

TEC was the first time I could actually see how other people think about teaching, and I could learn from the best! Even now, after – ahem – several years, I remember from that day the Jeopardy!-style game approach to pop quizzes about O.R. concepts; how to make good use of sports data to teach probability and statistics, as well as other activities that I have adopted, refined and successfully used in some of the classes that I have taught over the years. In the end, I started working at an institution that is very serious about both teaching and scholarship. Last year, it was so rewarding to read in my tenure letter that students were extremely satisfied with my classroom performance (in the interest of full disclosure, I also did not forget the advice on publishing, either). This was possible in no small measure because of that day when I first attended TEC. This year’s colloquium features a wide variety of high-quality speakers from business and engineering schools who

synopsis of all the confirmed talks. Jeff Camm (Wake Forest University) will discuss the practical importance of exploratory optimization and scenario modeling. Laura McLay (University of Wisconsin-Madison) will address the use of blogs and social media as teaching tools. Matt Bailey (Bucknell University) will discuss his experience teaching spreadsheet-based undergraduate analytics courses with the purpose of generating insights, not necessarily focusing on the “right” answer. Prakash Mirchandani (University of Pittsburgh) and Jim Cochran (University of Alabama) will each talk about their particular classroom approaches to stimulate active learning. Amy Cohn (University of Michigan) will discuss her experiences running a multi-disciplinary/ multi-“generational” lab (where both undergraduate and graduate students from different majors work together) and how to merge research with the educational mission of the academic institution. Finally, ormstoday.informs.org

This year¹s colloquium features a wide variety of high-quality speakers from business and engineering schools. Fredrik Ødegaard (Western University) will talk about the tactical problem of organizing and delivering case-based courses, drawing from his experience at the Ivey School of Business, one of the world’s leading case-based business schools. The last part of the colloquium is usually reserved for an activity that brings together all of the participants, presenters and audience members. In the past, depending on the audience’s interest, we have hosted open forums in a Q&A panel style, or we have had members of the audience form groups and deliver a presentation based on the insights they gathered during the day. Since this session is all about effective pedagogy, and one of

the tenets of that is to know your audience, we will see what the best approach is once we have an idea about who our participants are. So, if you haven’t already, go ahead and pester your department chair for a nomination letter and send in your application. To be eligible for consideration, an individual must be a: • member of INFORMS or have applied for membership at the time of the nomination; and • faculty member or instructor in one of INFORMS’ constituent disciplines or be within one year of completing all degree requirements for a Ph.D. in one of INFORMS’ constituent disciplines.

first-time nominees should there be a capacity constraint. A complete nomination by the department will include a: 1. letter of recommendation from the department chair; 2. list of OR/MS courses taught or expected to be taught by the nominee; 3. list of INFORMS teaching effectiveness colloquia and workshops that the nominee has attended in the past; and 4. mailing address, e-mail address and phone number of the nominee.

Faculty members who have attended a previous year’s TEC may be nominated again, but preference will be given to

Mihai Banciu is an associate professor of Operations and Decision Sciences in the School of Management at Bucknell University.

Send your Teaching Effectiveness Colloquium packages (electronic nominations as a single .pdf file) and requests for more information to Mihai Banciu (mihai.banciu@bucknell.edu). I am looking forward to seeing you in November. ORMS

August 2016

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PuzzlOR

John Toczek

puzzlor@gmail.com

Dating website matchups As the owner of a new dating website, you’re working on the logic on how to best match men and women together. Providing people with good dating candidates is important to keep them interested in using the website and for relationship success. So far, your first clients are 10 women and 10 men. Table 1 shows the personality characteristics for each person. The goal is to match pairs (one man to one woman) so that the most number of characteristics match. For each characteristic that matches, you earn one point. For example, matching Man 1 and Woman 1 would be worth two points (because the Living Preference and Social characteristics match). Question: What is the maximum number of points you can achieve? Send your answer to puzzlor@gmail.com by Oct. 15. The wnner, chosen randomly from correct answers, will receive a $25 Amazon Gift Card. Past questions and answers can be found at puzzlor.com. ORMS

PERSON POLITICS Man 1 Man 2 Man 3 Man 4 Man 5 Man 6 Man 7 Man 8 Man 9 Man 10 Woman 1 Woman 2 Woman 3 Woman 4 Woman 5 Woman 6 Woman 7 Woman 8 Woman 9 Woman 10

Liberal Liberal Conservative Liberal Conservative Conservative Conservative Liberal Liberal Liberal Conservative Liberal Conservative Conservative Conservative Liberal Conservative Conservative Liberal Liberal

HOBBY

LIVING PREFERENCE

SOCIAL

Running Chess Running Running Running Chess Chess Chess Running Running Chess Running Chess Running Chess Running Chess Running Chess Running

Rural Rural Urban Rural Rural Rural Urban Urban Urban Urban Rural Rural Rural Urban Urban Urban Urban Urban Urban Rural

Introverted Outgoing Introverted Introverted Introverted Introverted Introverted Introverted Introverted Outgoing Introverted Introverted Outgoing Outgoing Outgoing Introverted Outgoing Outgoing Introverted Introverted

Table 1: The dating game, circa 2016. John Toczek is the AVP Predictive Modeling at Chubb in the Decision Analytics and Predictive Modeling department. He earned his BSc. in Chemical Engineering at Drexel University (1996) and his MSc. in Operations Research from Virginia Commonwealth University (2005).

INFORMS O.R. & ANALYTICS STUDENT TEAM COMPETITION A brand new INFORMS competition that provides real-world workplace experience for undergraduate and master’s level students. • Gain practical experience • Use O.R. and Analytics to make decisions • Solve a real business problem Finalists will present solutions live to an expert panel at the 2017 INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research in Las Vegas, Nevada. YOU CAN WIN! • $5,000 Second Prize • $3,500 Third Prize, • $1,000 Fifth Prize

HOST SPONSOR:

ST FORM U SO D .R EN . & T ANA TE LYT A ICS M CH

• $7,500 First Prize • $1,500 Fourth Prize

Learn more at http://connect.informs.org/oratc/home 14 | ORMS Today

August 2016

ormstoday.informs.org

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Your StORy? Ryan J. O'Neil Head of Decision Engineering at Zoomer, Inc. Satisfied member of INFORMS since 2007

What prompted you to enter this field? Why? I first heard of O.R. reading David Goldberg's classic book on genetic algorithms. He kept referring to this obscure field I didn't know about, which seemed to do all the things I wanted to do. I was working as a programmer in a newsroom then, and George Mason University offers their graduate courses at night. I took deterministic models, taught by Karla Hoffman (now my advisor). The class was a revelation. Learning the OR mindset for the first time is like year one at Hogwarts. I never looked back and am just as excited about it now. What advice do you have for new students entering this field? Become a good coder and learn to work with data. Be comfortable in a software engineering environment. The biggest handicap I see in new graduates is learned helplessness from never stepping outside of pristine data sets and convenient modeling languages. That's not where our field is going. Models must live in the real world to be useful. O.R. is specialized stuff. There aren't a lot of people who understand it. Industry needs are growing, and we have to measure up to the opportunity. We need champions who are prepared to work hard and deliver awesome things. If you were a Microsoft Office program, which one would you be? My dark secret is that I'm quite challenged at using spreadsheets and other Office programs. If it doesn't involve a compiler, I'm more or less hopeless. If I were an optimization library, however, I'd be Gecode. It's efficient; I like its style. If we were sitting here a year from now celebrating what a great year it's been for you, what would we be celebrating? I'm very invested in the success of my team members. In a year, I plan to celebrate the results of their hard work building decision management systems and taking Zoomer to the next level of analytical sophistication.

More questions for Ryan? Ask him in the Open Forum on INFORMS Connect!

http://connect.informs.org

INFORMS Initiatives

Essential skills, CAP & team competition Continuing education: Essential practice skills for analytics projects Patrick S. Noonan, a professor at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School whose experience with the management consulting profession spans 30 years, will teach an intensive, hands-on, two-day course on “Essential practice skills Patrick S. Noonan for high-impact analytics projects” on Sept. 28-29 in Arlington, Va. The course, part of INFORMS’ Continuing Education program, is aimed at analytics professionals looking to sharpen and expand their analytical skills and “soft skills” that are so essential for solving real-world problem. By the end of the course, students will learn practical frameworks and systematic processes for addressing complex, real-world problems and how to facilitate effective action. They will also understand best-practice techniques, including problem statement summaries, issue trees, interview guides, work plans, sensitivity analysis, stress-testing recommendations, the “Pyramid Principle” of story logic, story-boarding, slide-craft, delivering presentations and fielding Q&A. They will learn to link their subject-matter expertise to the challenges of messy, unstructured problems, organizational noise and non-technical decision-makers. Day one of the course focuses on such topics as defining the problem, structuring the problem, planning the work and working the plan. Day two shifts to developing insights and recommendations, making the case, and creating value through action. In June in Denver, Noonan led a class of analytics professionals representing companies such as Microsoft, Nestle, Google and UPS, in addition to participants from higher education, nonprofit and energy sectors. Reflecting on his experience, Rob Miller, 16 | ORMS Today

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long-range demand forecaster at Microsoft, said,“The class was excellent. I’ve been exposed to a few management consulting/ strategy-consulting techniques prior to the training, but it was never integrated in the same, effective way. Also, the experiential learning was really effective.” Noonan co-founded Planning Technologies Group, whose innovative work in strategic planning and information technology earned a place in the “100 Leading Management Consulting Firms” compiled by Consultants News. Noonan’s consulting and executive education clients have included Microsoft, Bertelsmann, NewsCorp, The New York Daily News, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merrill Lynch, the Centers for Disease Control, Sea-Land, Accenture, the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Economics Institute, Johns Hopkins University and Greenpeace. A member of INFORMS for almost 25 years, Noonan has presented on research and pedagogy more than two dozen times at INFORMS conferences, and he has played leadership and major service roles in the Decision Analysis Society, INFORM-ED, SPRIG, the Teaching Effectiveness Colloquium and INFORMS Transactions on Education. Noonan will next teach the essential practice skills course on Sept. 28-29 at the Executive Conference Center, Suite 200, 2345 Crystal Drive,Arlington,Va., 22202. For more information and to register, visit the INFORMS website (www.informs.org/) or contact Continuing Education Program Manager Bill Griffin (bgriffin@informs.org). How to renew your CAP certification To anyone who earned Certified Analytics Professional (CAP®) status in 2013, it’s time to renew. CAP is a credential that includes a requirement to continue involvement in the analytics profession and to demonstrate compliance every three years. Certificate holders need to earn 30 professional development hours (PDUs)

over the three years of certification in order to renew. The PDUs may be earned in several different categories including: formal professional education courses, self-directed learning, creating new analytics knowledge or content, volunteer service and analytics professional work experience. In general, one hour of activity equals one PDU. For details, see the CAP Candidate Handbook. To renew, simply log in, input your PDUs and update your CAP certification by visiting the INFORMS website (www. informs.org/). For more information, contact info@certifiedanalytics.org. Competition for tomorrow’s leaders in O.R. & analytics A new INFORMS Student Team Competition provides real-world workplace experience for undergraduate and master’s level students. Student teams will be given the same business problem, data sets and access to software to solve a challenging problem using an O.R./ analytics approach. A panel of industry and academic experts will judge written submissions based on a team’s use of the full analytics process, from framing the problem to methodology selection, data use, model building and innovation. Demonstrated “soft skills” in teamwork, communication and presentation will also be considered in the judging. Prizes include $7,500 for first place, $5,000 for second, $3,500 for third, $1,500 for fourth and $1,000 for fifth. Finalist teams will also receive a stipend to offset the cost of travel and conference registration. Syngenta Corp., a leading seed biotech company, will serve as host sponsor for the 2017 competition and provide the problem and data. A preliminary written problem statement will be published in early August, with the final problem, data sets and software access available Sept. 12. Interested teams must register their intent to compete by Sept. 30.Written entries are due Jan. 23, 2017, with finalists announced on Feb. 20. Finalists will present their work on April 3, 2017 at the INFORMS conference in Las Vegas. Winners will be announced at the conference. For information: http:// connect.informs.org/oratc/home. ORMS ormstoday.informs.org

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FORUM

By John Gunckel and Jeff Winters

What the INFORMS Roundtable thinks The INFORMS Roundtable is comprised of a diverse group of 45 world-class analytics organizations of all sizes across many industries whose purpose is to share best practices and recent developments in operations research, management science and analytics. The Roundtable institutionalized a “What does the Roundtable Think?” session at the summer 2014 meeting where Roundtable members were broken into groups and asked to address questions relevant to managing an analytics organization. The findings were presented at an INFORMS Board meeting to help keep the Board abreast of trends/issues associated with managing an analytics group in practice. At the spring 2016 meeting, the Roundtable hosted another “What does the Roundtable Think?” session focused primarily on staffing and on what makes analytics projects successful. This article summarizes the findings and discussion that at times seemed contradictory, reflecting the diversity and uniqueness of organizations represented on the Roundtable. Staffing Skill sets: A common theme among the organizations represented is the need for soft skills that are necessary for success. Concerns noted by organizations were the need for basic communication skills, project management skills (for both people and technology), ability to communicate business issues/ solutions/results/benefits and the overall ability to “tell a story.” The story needs to be easily comprehended by the intended audience through verbal, written, visualization and other communication vehicles. Other skills noted were the need for overall perspective. 18 | ORMS Today

August 2016

“data analytics” to define roles instead of a hierarchy of job titles. Recruiting and retention of analytically trained women is generally recognized among Roundtable companies as important. The approach to bringing women into the pipeline varies greatly. Companies cite a rich set of diversified

A common theme among the organizations represented is the need for soft skills necessary for success.

For example, a need to emphasize business value delivered instead of tools or techniques employed. Company managers want results and are less interested in exactly how it is accomplished. Another area noted by some organizations was the need to emphasize basic math and programming skills. Some new hires are coming out of academic programs without this basic foundation, which will require additional training and expense. Geographic organization: Roundtable organizations reported that analytical groups could be centrally located or distributed. Reasons cited include the type/ size of organization, importance of local domain knowledge, common language/ culture, etc. For example, consulting firms were more likely to consolidate analytic resources and travel to work sites. Reasons to consolidate include mentoring and the need for “community of practice” among analytic professionals. Recruiting & Retention: Roundtable companies are seeing competition for analytic talent increasing and must respond to the marketplace forces. Analytic professionals (especially young new hires) expect good pay and flexibility. Roundtable companies report that there are many new options for workplace mobility that are being explored, pay expectations are going up but vary geographically, and poaching is a problem in high-tech areas such as Silicon Valley. High-tech companies spend a lot of effort screening applicants, which makes them desirable to other companies. Company approaches to analytic job titles vary with some emphasizing professional roles. Some are using umbrella terms such as “data scientist” or

applicants, use of role models, and equal opportunity programs as tools to increase the number of qualified women applicants. Making Analytics Projects Successful Managing an analytics project: One area that created significant discussion is how to set up an analytics project for success and how to deal with failure. Roundtable companies employ a variety of approaches to maximize the likelihood of success. Key success practices identified include the following: • Define business issue and criteria for success. • Avoid scope creep. • Set up an executive steering team. • Set and control expectations. • Focus on incremental improvement as opposed to big bang efforts. If things don’t work out, you want to fail quickly and learn why. Prototyping is very helpful. • Engage and communicate with the customer throughout the entire process. • Training and selling are key. Analytics professionals impact: Member companies reported that measuring the impact of analytics professionals is very important, but it can be difficult and subjective. Determining the best method (both quantitative and qualitative) is challenging since there is no one measure that works best or ormstoday.informs.org

can capture overall impact. Member companies report using normal HR performance indices, economic measures, project reviews and peer reviews. Roundtable companies agree that measuring impact is an ongoing concern. Partnering with universities: Among Roundtable members, working with universities is generally an important way to extend their overall analytics impact and augment existing resources. Various methods employed are as follows: student internships, student capstone projects, research partnerships, university grants/ funding for special interests, guest lecturer and sponsored hack-a-thons. There is general agreement that work with universities is beneficial but not without issues with intellectual property and control. Open source software: Member companies report a tremendous demand for using open source software due to the breadth and usefulness.

Younger employees fresh out of school are seen as some of the biggest drivers of this trend since most academic institutions are using open source software. Some obstacles to broadening the use of open source software are indemnification and support issues. However, some companies are using commercially available open source “wrappers” to overcome these obstacles. Summary The 2016 “What does the Roundtable think?” responses varied widely and reflect the breadth of the INFORMS Roundtable, but there are some common themes: • Soft skills are a very important factor in finding new OR/MS talent and often define the success or failure of a new candidate in an organization. • Successful projects depend on reaching a common understanding of requirements up front and making

sure the customer is involved throughout the development process. • Measuring the value of an OR/MS employee is difficult, but evaluating the effectiveness of the overall product and using peer reviews is a reasonable approach. • Partnering with universities offers many challenges, but there are ways to increase interaction. • Open source software is probably not going away. ORMS John Gunckel, managing director at FedEx Express, is secretary of the INFORMS Roundtable. Jeff Winters, director, Small Package Operations Research, United Parcel Service, is a past president of the Roundtable and current vice president of meetings for the organization. The INFORMS Roundtable (www.informs.org/Community/ Roundtable) promotes OR/MS excellence in practice, provides practitioner-inspired leadership to the profession and promotes the personal professional growth of Roundtable representatives.

NORTHWESTERN ANALYTICS Northwestern University offers two master’s degree programs in analytics that prepare students to meet the growing demand for data-driven leadership and problem solving. Graduates develop a robust technical foundation to guide data-driven decision making and innovation, as well as the strategic, communication and management skills that position them for leadership roles in a wide range of industries and disciplines.

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ANALYTICS • 15-month, full-time, on-campus program • Integrates data science, information technology and business applications into three areas of data analysis: predictive (forecasting), descriptive (business intelligence and data mining) and prescriptive (optimization and simulation) • Offered by the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

analytics.northwestern.edu MASTER OF SCIENCE IN PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS • Online, part-time program • Builds expertise in advanced analytics, data mining, database management, financial analysis, predictive modeling, quantitative reasoning, and web analytics, as well as advanced communication and leadership • Offered by Northwestern University School of Professional Studies

312-503-2579 | predictive-analytics.northwestern.edu/info

August 2016

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Viewpoint

By Irv Lustig

O.R. & data science: a complicated relationship Survey: Analytics community weighs in on technology and industry trends and their impact on operations research. It should come as no surprise that a large percentage of the analytics community agrees that technological trends will greatly impact the analytics profession going forward, according to an informal survey of attendees at the INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research earlier this year in Orlando, Fla. However, opinion is mixed regarding key concerns about perceived limitations on operations research specialists in business environments, as the number of other types of analytics practitioners and data scientists continues to grow. The survey, conducted by Princeton Consultants, produced the following findings: • The trends of algorithm markets, cognitive computing, the Internet of Things, machine learning and big data are widely expected to make a large or transformational impact on analytics in the next four years. • There’s modest concern that operations research is being subsumed by analytics and data science, and that O.R. is slowly becoming irrelevant – a provocative claim that was first published in 2010 in OR/MS Today. • There’s modest agreement that operations research professionals are too often pigeonholed within the execution phases of analytics. • Opinion is evenly divided about the claim that the rapid increase in citizen data scientists is making it harder for O.R. professionals to make an impact. • There’s a broad distribution of roles and functions within analytics groups at businesses. • Businesses deploy and manage analytics practitioners in a variety of ways, with no dominant framework. 20 | ORMS Today

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• Practitioners are evenly divided about whether they should be centrally organized or organized by industry and/or application area. About the Survey Seventy-seven self-selected individuals participated in the survey. Of those, 74 percent were practitioners, 20 percent were students and 6 percent were professors. The majority of the practitioners work at big companies. Specifically, 57 percent work at companies with more than 5,000 employees, 9 percent work at companies with 1,000-4,999 employees, 9 percent work at companies with 100-999 employees, and 25 percent

work at companies with less than 100 employees (includes sole practitioners). The nonscientific “snapshot” survey was divided into two sections: 1. Practitioners were asked about the composition, function and organization of their analytics group. 2. All participants were asked about the role and importance of operations research as the number of other types of analytics professionals increases significantly, and about their views of the potential impact of current trends. Figures 1, 2, 3 and 4 relate to the practice of analytics, specifically the size, composition, function and organization of the respondent’s respective analytics group. Regarding Figure 2, it should be noted that other work titles sumitted by participants, none of which received more than two mentions, included: analytics manager, analyst, applied technologist, business intelligence analyst, data technologist, decision science,

Is the rapid increase in citizen data scientists making it harder for O.R. professionals to make an impact?

Figure 1: Size of the analytics group. ormstoday.informs.org

Figure 2: Composition of the analytics group.

engineer (2), management scientist (2), product management scientist, project engineer, reporting and analytics analyst, reporting and analytics senior database developer, research engineer, senior analyst (2), and systems engineer. Regarding Figure 3, other functions entered by participants included algorithm development and methodology. Regarding Figure 4, other descriptions entered by participants included: 1) central staff in R&D responsible for high-impact opportunity identification, problem framing, model/methodology/ algorithm development including invent

Figure 3: Function of the analytics group.

and pilot testing and validation. Collaboration with business units and other staffs for “productionization” (e.g., IT) and business use (decentralized teams). Team does internal consulting when aligned with high-impact opportunities or closely related to new/developing areas; and 2) sole practitioner. Views on O.R., Analytics & Tech Trends Question 1: Consider this excerpt from an article published in OR/MS Today more than five years ago [1]: “The analytics process spans project initiation

(problem identification and process analysis), planning (requirements gathering and data needs/analysis), execution (data visualization, assessment analysis, predictions and trends and optimization/simulation) and conclusions.Whether right or wrong, business largely sees O.R. residing only in the execution phase (and only in part of that phase).” To what extent do you agree with this statement: O.R. practitioners are too often pigeonholed within the execution phases of analytics. Comments from survey participants: 1. “Highly variable within my company. In some areas the O.R. team runs all phases (though the phases aren’t linear as described in the cited article). In others, O.R. team supports different phases, varying based on needs of project and strength of internal collaborators/business partners.” 2. “The vision for my team was always to span the end-to-end analytics life cycle.” 3. “I see analytics as ‘smaller’ than O.R., which includes problem identification and formulation. In fact, both O.R. and analytics professionals are often so pigeonholed.” 4. “Starts with data cleaning and exploration.” Question 2: Consider another excerpt from that same article in OR/MS Today [1]: “There seems to be a stronger vertical industry alignment for analytics professionals than for O.R. professionals. For example, analytics professionals working in healthcare see themselves as healthcare professionals who happen to use analytics to help drive business decisions. Conversely, business seems to hold the view that operations research professionals, no matter the industry, tend to see themselves as operations researchers first and an industry professional second.” To what extent do you agree with this statement: Analytics practitioners should be organized by industry and/or application area, and should not be centrally organized. August 2016

ORMS Today

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Viewpoint

Comments from survey participants: 1. “Centrally organizing analysts, to at least some extent, allows for wonderful opportunities to share skills and knowledge and create a true community of practice. Learning the business is often easier than learning the technical skills. Analysts are always using data and techniques to guide the business. It’s not always the other way around.” 2. “I work in a healthcare org, and we don’t have vertical integration for analytics.” 3. “Both O.R. and analytics professionals need the so-called ‘soft’ skills of framing a problem well; that’s aided by domain expertise, but is a separable skill in its own right. I’d ‘strongly disagree,’ but I feel it’s critical for O.R. and only very important for analytics.” 4. “Both are good. Of course, O.R. and analytics persons are generalists, but most will specialize in certain areas.” 5. “Conflicting priorities without centralization.” 6. “Domain knowledge can be very important.” Question 3: Consider this excerpt from an article published more than six years ago [2]: “Analytics will subsume OR/MS and many of our practitioners will work in analytics teams. We do not need to change our name or redefine our profession, but we do have to make an effort to reach out more broadly to the analytics community and address their professional needs. Will INFORMS reorient and scale to meet this challenge and subsume analytics, or will we be subsumed and rendered irrelevant by it?” To what extent do you agree with this statement: “Operations research is being subsumed by analytics and data science, and O.R. is slowly becoming irrelevant.” Comments from participants: 1. “My company still views uniquely O.R. skills (mixed integer programming, etc.) as really important.They recognize that your garden-variety data analyst can’t do these things.” 22 | ORMS Today

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Figure 4: Organization of the analytics group.

2. “The term ‘analytics’ is overly broad; it means different things to different people. It’s helpful to use the term in first stages of discussion – when people have only a vague notion of OR/MS and analytics – but it can be confusing when used to define an execution strategy. In my view, O.R. isn’t being subsumed by analytics.” 3. “O.R. always included descriptive, predictive and prescriptive.” 4. “O.R. clearly fits within analytics and data science.” 5. ‘I see analytics as ‘smaller’ than O.R., which includes problem identification and formulation. In fact, both O.R. and analytics professionals are often so pigeonholed. Also reflect on how the DSS (decision support systems) concept did not kill O.R., but rather enhanced our toolkit and ways to implement our tools.” 6. “Not sure where O.R. is going to be pigeonholed, but it will be very important.” 7. “It’s just different names. Marketing.” 8. “Good O.R. always had to deal with what is now called the analytics process. Data science is mainly about predictions to me; this is not typical O.R. O.R. will not become irrelevant.”

Question 4: In 2015, Gartner defined a citizen data scientist as “… a person who creates or generates models that leverage predictive or prescriptive analytics but whose primary job function is outside of the field of statistics and analytics” and predicted that, through 2017, the number of citizen data scientists will grow five times faster than their highly trained counterparts. To what extent do you agree with this statement: “Citizen data scientists are rapidly increasing in number, and consequently O.R. practitioners are finding it harder to make an impact.” Comments from participants: 1. “Agree that data scientists are growing but believe they are making it easier for O.R. to make an impact.” 2. “I agree that they are increasing in number, but I find that they often know just enough to be dangerous. I’m often asked to review and validate their work, which means my impact is still very meaningful.” 3. “Not either-or, but both-and. Bound to be some problematic dances early on, but these close-but-not-identical skill sets should ultimately be complementary, not competitive.” 4. “This is sad.” ormstoday.informs.org

5. “Yes, citizen data scientists are rapidly increasing, but they make O.R. people more relevant, not less.” Question 5: What will be the impact (see Figure 5) of these trends on analytics by 2020? ORMS Irv Lustig (irv@princeton.com) is an optimization principal at Princeton Consultants (www.princeton.com/advancedanalytics) and a longtime, active INFORMS member.

REFERENCES 1. Anne Robinson, Jack Levis and Gary Bennett, 2010, “INFORMS to Officially Join Analytics Movement,” OR/MS Today, October 2010. 2. Rahul Saxena, 2010, “As Analytics Subsumes O.R., will INFORMS Subsume Analytics?,” OR/MS Today, February 2010.

Figure 5: Five trends will have significant and nearly equal impact going forward according to the survey.

Letter to the Editor

A modest proposal:

Fully include part-time faculty in teaching Until recently, I saw no connection between myself and INFORM-ED because I’m neither a student nor a full-time faculty member. It occurred to me, however, that as a part-time faculty member, I might have a dog in this fight. Full-time faculty in most universities have a number of teaching aids, such as Blackboard, readily available, often with free classes on how to use them. Adjuncts typically cannot even access these resources, let alone get training on them. Having students complain, “This instructor didn’t use the learning aids my other professors did, boo, hiss,” is a splendid way to turn off both instructors and students. In many communities, such as the Washington, D.C., area, where I live, there is a rich pool of talent available to teach part time. Would it not make sense – in fact, is it not a typical OR/MS recommendation – to manage and sustain these people as if they really matter to the institution?

It wouldn’t cost much to make computer resources available to them and to include them in meetings about how to teach more effectively. Some interesting opportunities for collaborative research might even arise. After all, part-time faculty are mostly practitioners, often with good connections to potential applied research sponsors. Some institutions have received substantial benefit from creating industry-based advisory councils to deans and department chairs. The companies and agencies these advisors represent are a rich source of both sponsorships and part-time instructors, but the benefit is negated if the part-time instructors are treated and utilized badly. We c ould sta r t by ac tively encouraging part-time faculty to be part of INFORM-ED, do some of the training as an INFORM-ED activity, and, via the INFORM-ED forum, lobby academic institutions to include part-

timers fully in the methodology and technology of instruction. I posted this proposal to INFORM-ED via INFORMS Connect about July 1 and, as of this writing in mid-July, there has been one response. Maybe it’s because not many people read those discussion threads. I hope that’s the explanation. I will say that if the full-time academic members of the profession are not interested in ideas like this, then they have no basis to complain when no one in practice is interested in them. ORMS

Douglas A. Samuelson Annandale, Va.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Doug Samuelson is a longtime, active member of INFORMS and a frequent contributor to OR/ MS Today via his “ORacle” column and other articles.

August 2016

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INNOVATIVE EDUCATION EDITOR’S NOTE: For more than a decade, OR/MS Today has invited the most recent recipient of the INFORMS Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS Practice to contribute an article to the magazine’s annual special issue on innovative education. We ask for a brief description of the award-winning O.R. program and the reasons for its success, as well as an outline of the recipient’s educational background, teaching philosophy, mentors and advice for their fellow O.R. educators. Following is the story of Naval Postgraduate School Professor Thomas W. Lucas, the 2015 teaching prize recipient.

Learning by solving real problems

It At the Naval Postgraduate School, students learn O.R. by doing O.R. that helps enhance the security of the United States and its allies.

By Thomas W. Lucas

24 | ORMS Today

August 2016

is a great honor to receive the 2015 INFORMS Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS Practice. My journey to this point has followed an unusual path, and there are many people who made this possible. Most prominent among them are my parents, who were math teachers who loved learning and sharing knowledge – and fostered a similar state of mind in their children. After earning a B.S. in operations research and industrial engineering, I took a job as a systems engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company. I spent 11 years at Hughes working on a variety of Navy problems, such as bottom-contour navigation, target tracking, data fusion and weapon employment. The job was rewarding and interesting, and inspired me to learn more. So, while at Hughes, I continued my education (M.S. and Ph.D.) by participating in Hughes’ graduate education fellowship program. Subsequently, I spent six years doing public policy research as a project leader and member of the statistics group at RAND. During this time, John Rolph invited me to teach classes at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business – it was an eye-opening experience that strengthened my desire to be in the classroom. ormstoday.informs.org

Rick Rosenthal, the 2000 winner of this award, recruited me to the Operations Research (O.R.) Department at the Naval Postg raduate School (NPS) nearly two decades ago. Since I had a background and interest in national defense, and a love of teaching at the university level, I jumped on this unique opportunity. Rick was a great mentor and role model. More importantly, he charged me with doing my utmost for our students. While at NPS, I’ve had a long and fruitful collaboration with Susan Sanchez. We share research interests that are grounded in practical applications. We have partnered in building a center that provides tremendous resources and opportunities for Professor Tom Lucas at NPS received the 2015 INFORMS Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS Practice. our students. It is easy to get motivated to teach our students. As officers, they show up to annum. When you couple the breadth of decisions It is class on time, call you sir or ma’am, and really try that must be made with the inherent uncertainty to do all the homework – well, most of the time. involved, there is no shortage of topics with potenMoreover, since what they are studying directly tially great impact, which is good since every student affects their profession, the students are driven. needs to complete a master’s thesis. Sadly, many of us have lost former students opto erating in the service of their country. We hope The SEED Center for Data Farming that what our students learn at NPS saves lives, The SEED Center for Data Farming (http:// and we strive to make it so. harvest.nps.edu) was created (with Susan Sanchez) NPS students are mostly mid-level military to involve and support our graduate students in officers, and while we are a U.S. Navy graduate applied and theoretical research projects, primarily university, we have students from all the services sponsored by the DoD. SEED is an acronym for and more than 40 countries. Much is expected “simulation experiments and efficient design.” since what from our faculty, as scores of our graduates have Data farming refers to using high-performance grown into senior military leaders – including computing to “grow” data.We contrast data farming former O.R. graduates Adm. Mike Mullen (rewith data mining as follows. The data miner seeks cent Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), P.C. valuable nuggets of information from a large volume Lui (longtime Singapore chief defense scientist) of data. Similarly to how a geographical miner has and James Roche (former Secretary of the Air minimal control over the geology being mined, a Force). Because of our graduates’ success, new data miner typically has less than full control over directly NPS professors are advised to do right by their the raw data he or she analyzes (e.g., Twitter feeds, students, since one day they will almost certainly credit-card swipes, satellite reports, etc.). Conversely, be working for some of them! data farmers choose the inputs, outputs and number NPS students have jobs waiting for them upon of computational experiments to conduct. Thus, their graduation. Graduates of the O.R. Department typlike agricultural farmers, what they reap depends ically go on to help their service and country deupon what they sow and cultivate. The enabling termine how best to equip, staff, organize, employ, technologies for data farming are high-performance train, supply, and maintain their forces. The United computing, new designs of experiments developed States Department of Defense (DoD) is more than specifically for computational models, and higha half-trillion-dollar-a-year enterprise – making sev- dimensional data analysis and visualization eral tens of billions of dollars in new investments per techniques [1]. The Center’s mission is to imbed

easy to get motivated

teach our students … they are studying affects

profession.

August 2016

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Teaching O.R. AT THE NPS

The

U.S. Navy has long

understood the value of O.R. Indeed,

military applications led to the

science now known as

operations research.

students in projects that make modeling and simulation more effective for decision-makers – with an ultimate goal of informing decisions at all levels to ensure that sailors, soldiers, Marines and airmen have what they need to accomplish their missions safely and efficiently. Nearly 170 students, from all the services and more than a dozen countries, have completed their thesis or dissertation research in the SEED Center. Our students’ theses tend to have a real-world problem underpinning them – ideally with people outside NPS awaiting the results. Researchers and students in the Center are developing new methods and routinely doing computational experiments using designs that were not available only a decade ago – sometimes simultaneously varying hundreds of variables of different types and levels. SEED Center students have won more than 20 major thesis awards. Their success follows from the breadth of support that the Center provides, including the SEED Lab (a work area with desks, computers, printer and a smart screen that facilitates collaboration among students doing similar research), laptops, a high-performance computing cluster, research assistants, weekly seminars and international workshops. The more than a dozen international data-farming workshops that the SEED Center has hosted or participated in have allowed more than 60 students to work in teams of subject matter experts, modelers and analysts from around the world in week-long, model-based studies. We are able to provide this support because our sponsors recognize the value received on their investment. Problem-Driven Research and Sponsored Applications The U.S. Navy has long understood the value of operations research. Indeed, military applications, such as finding submarines and protecting supply convoys, led scientists to formalize their efforts into the science now known as operations research [2]. Our research in the SEED Center is also problem-driven. Student applications have included support to ongoing operations (such as in Afghanistan), systems analysis (e.g., trade-off studies), humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, critical infrastructure protection, tactics development, manpower planning, organi-

26 | ORMS Today

August 2016

zational behavior, logistics and more. What most of these have in common is that there are a large number of potentially important variables that may interact in nonlinear ways, multiple outcomes of interest, and lots of uncertainty. Consequently, stochastic simulation is our most-used O.R. analysis technique. Simulation enables our students to build models that are better representations of the complicated systems or phenomena being studied than is typically feasible using analytically tractable models derived by invoking classic academic assumptions such as linear ity, deter ministic relationships, declaring independence, normality, heteroscedasticity, memorylessness, etc. Hence, their insights are usually of enhanced practical value. The simulations we use tend to be of high dimension with significant a priori uncertainty. Fortunately, the science of exploring these models is rapidly advancing, with our students making important contributions [3]. SEED Center students have spent the last dozen years collaborating with faculty to build a portfolio of designs that provide computational researchers with design and analysis flexibility. Design flexibility allows us to readily generate designs for a broad set of input factors (numbers and types) and sampling budgets. Analysis flexibility provides the ability to fit many diverse meta-models to multiple outputs and generate a wide variety of visual relationships. Our most-used design is the family of space-filling nearly orthogonal Latin hypercubes (NOLHs) developed by Lt. Col. Tom Cioppa [4]. Since extensive computation is used to generate these NOLHs, a catalogue of ready-to-use designs was made available in an online spreadsheet – this has become our killer app, and is used by scientists around the world. A subsequent student, Col. Andy Hernandez, used mixed integer programming to increase greatly the dimensions in which NOLHs are available [5]. Brazilian Lt. Col. Helcio Vieira extended Hernandez’s approach to develop an algorithm that makes designs that are nearly orthogonal and nearly balanced for mixes of categorical, discrete (with a mix of multiple levels) and continuous factors [6]. Lt. Col. Alex MacCalman used evolutionary algorithms to build NOLHs for a complete second-order model [7]. Each dissertation built on the previous ones, and all of them were driven by needs arising from practical applications. The above algorithms were developed to help researchers extract more information from their computational experiments.They have been used in more than a hundred diverse applications by students at ormstoday.informs.org

NPS, usually as part of their master’s theses. Brief recaps of a few exemplary ones follow: • The U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command Analysis Center used simulation to develop an investment strategy regarding unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). One such model was ASC-U (short for assignment scheduling capability for UAVs). ASC-U develops a planning schedule that takes into account hundreds of UAVs, of multiple types, trying to fulﬁll thousands of missions over a 15-day period. As part of a broader effort, we used NOLHs to determine that fewer classes of UAVs were needed.The analysis was credited with helping save billions of dollars [8]. • A series of students did award-winning theses under the rubric of NPS’s Project Jason investigating how Navy ships can best defend against swarming UAVs and other emerging threats.The robust tactics discovered through millions of simulated engagements, across a breadth of scenarios, have already been transferred to the fleet in the form of tactical bulletins.This research is classified so the very interesting details can’t be shared. • The Army’s enlisted specialty (ES) model informs the management of more than 400,000 enlisted soldiers with a seven-year planning horizon.The ES model we explored took into account 859,633 variables and calculated projections against 224,473 constraints.We found that, by adjusting just eight of the 52 fixed coefficients in an optimization portion of the model, the number of misaligned soldiers is reduced by roughly two combat brigades (8,400 soldiers) [9]. Be Passionate and Other Pedagogical Thoughts My top advice to teachers is simple: excite and energize your students. Learning is a lifelong endeavor, and most learning takes place outside of a classroom. The easiest way to excite your students is with your own enthusiasm, energy and passion. Indeed, you got where you are because you love your subject. Share that passion with your students and help nurture it in them. Some students who do not see the practical value of what is being taught quickly lose interest. By focusing on solutions to real problems and using real data in your examples, the lectures can motivate as well as teach. Most methods were derived for a reason; tell the story associ-

My top

ated with the method’s development and highlight cases where O.R. practitioners and scientists have made a profound difference. Moreover, since classes may contain students with a broad range of capabilities, I give out variable-resolution projects. That is, most all of the students can meet the minimum standard, but motivated students have natural ways in which to “add something extra” and are rewarded for doing so. Learning how to learn may be the biggest challenge facing students. A real-analysis professor of mine, whose name I have long since forgotten, started each exam with 30 points based simply on writing out definitions and theorems. Well, that was easy, since all I needed to do was memorize the definitions and theorems, so I did. Lo and behold, I found that having a solid foundation in the definitions and theorems made the lectures much more meaningful and the homework considerably easier. To this day I start each weekly lab with a short vocabulary quiz. This professor probably has no idea how his simple technique affected me and the thousands of students I have had in class. Few other professions, if any, can do so much for so many. ORMS

advice to teachers is simple:

excite and

energize your

students

Professor Tom Lucas, professor of operations research at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., received the 2015 INFORMS Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS Practice. He is co-director of the SEED Center (https://harvest.nps.edu/) at NPS.

REFERENCES 1. Lucas, T.W., W.D. Kelton, S.M. Sanchez, P.J. Sanchez, and B.L. Anderson, 2015, “Changing the paradigm: simulation, often the method of first resort,” Naval Research Logistics, Vol. 62, No. 4, pp. 293-303. 2. Morse, P.M., and G.E. Kimball, 1951, “Methods of Operations Research,” Wiley. 3. Kleijnen, J.P.C., S.M. Sanchez, T.W. Lucas, and T.M. Cioppa, 2005, “A user’s guide to the brave new world of designing simulation experiments,” INFORMS Journal on Computing, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 263-289. 4. Cioppa, T.M., and T.W. Lucas, 2007, “Efficient nearly orthogonal and space-filling Latin hypercubes,” Technometrics, Vol. 49, No. 1, pp. 45-55. 5. Hernandez, A.S., T.W. Lucas, and M. Carlyle, 2012, “Constructing nearly orthogonal Latin hypercubes for any nonsaturated run-variable combination,” ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 20:1-20:17. 6. Vieira Jr., H., S.M. Sanchez, K.H. Kienitz, and M.C.N. Belderrain, 2013, “Efficient, nearly orthogonal-and-balanced, mixed designs: an effective way to conduct trade-off analyses via simulation,” Journal of Simulation, Vol. 7, pp. 264-275. 7. MacCalman, A.D., H. Vieira, and T.W. Lucas, 2016, “Second order nearly orthogonal Latin hypercubes for exploring complex stochastic simulations,” Journal of Simulation. 8. Sanchez, S.M., T.W. Lucas, P.J. Sanchez, C.J. Nannini, and H. Wong, 2012, “Designs for largescale simulation experiments with applications to defense and homeland security,” “Design and Analysis of Experiments, volume III,” by Hinckleman (ed.), pp. 413-441,Wiley. 9. Erdman, R.W., 2010, “Using experimental design and data analysis to study the enlisted specialty model for the U.S. Army G1,” MS in Operations Research, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, Calif.

August 2016

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INNOVATIVE EDUCATION

Defining analytics through the eyes of students

As No matter how we define “analytics,” for EMBA students, often simple “analytics” adds value and this defines “success.”

By Peter Bell 28 | ORMS Today

August 2016

INFORMS has moved further into “analytics,” considerable interest has surfaced in an attempt to define “analytics.” Most of the discussion within INFORMS has taken the view that “analytics” has to be highly quantitative, but I hope that INFORMS will take a broader view. Here’s why. I’ve been teaching a core analytics course in Ivey’s Executive MBA (EMBA) program for many years, and part of this course has always been a project done in the student’s workplace where the challenge has been to “do some analytics” that has a positive impact, either financially or organizationally. A key deliverable for this project is a letter from management assessing the impact of the work and its value to the organization. I estimate that I have read and graded almost 1,000 projects over the years. ormstoday.informs.org

These are executive student projects (teams of two or three) so they rarely involve any analytical heavy lifting, but the claimed impact has been impressive with about 5 percent of the projects reporting gains in excess of $5 million, and 20 percent reporting gains in excess of $1 million. Just after I was invited to write an article for this backto-school issue of OR/MS Today, the following e-mail ar r ived from a former student: “I just wanted to follow up on our project from last term. Beyond highly quantitative: The case for a broader definition of “analytics.” Based on the partial changes we implemented due to the project analytics, we have seen an increase of over becomes “analytics.” For example, in the classroom $150K, within 30 days of implementation. we cover several cases where an analytical pricing We took a phased-in approach and it’s been approach proves useful, and I use these examples to successful with negligible complaints or concerns emphasize the basic approach to pricing from anfrom our users. We are on track to see an alytics, which is to segment the market and then additional revenue lift of approximately $1.5M price each segment separately so as to maximize in the next 12 months if all things remain revenue (or contribution) while meeting an oversteady. all sales objective or constraint. The models that we “Although it may not have met the exact build in class also happen to illustrate the potential description of an analytics project, we were aware revenue enhancing value of a basic pricing heuristic of the risks and the ‘stickiness’ of our customer “when demand is high price high, and when debase. Demand remains consistent, and is in fact mand is low price low.” growing with new users.” We also discuss a supply chain/pricing case that illustrates the value of pricing decisions in The second paragraph is a response to my helping out supply chain issues. In this case, the grade report where I expressed doubt as to firm greatly benefits from raising the price on whether the project met the course requirement products that use bottleneck production proto include some “analytics.” These students were cesses and reducing the price on products that do planning a major change in this company’s pricnot. Again, this leads to a pricing heuristic along ing strategy, but there was no attempt at data the lines that if a product is difficult to schedule, collection or “demand modeling,” so I expressed price it high; but if it’s easy to schedule, price it the concern that if they started moving prices low. The cases we cover all include demand data around, sales might decline so they would need and lend themselves to some statistical analyto monitor demand/sales closely. sis and construction of demand models, and can Many EMBA projects (such as the one also be set up as optimizations to find optimal above) over the years have applied simple revenue maximizing prices. These are executive heuristics derived from analytics to real-world students, however, and many find the demand situations without doing any math or statistics, modeling and optimization quite challenging. and they have claimed a substantial revenue lift When students go back to their organizations or cost reduction. These student projects provide to do the course project, they remember the interesting, and I think valuable, lessons about general heuristics, and they apply these without “analytics.” doing any data collection, demand modeling and price optimization. I have seen this heuristic Competing With Analytics pricing approach applied to e-tailing, readyIf I cover a topic in my “Competing with Analyt- mixed concrete, long distance transportation, ics” course, then in the mind of the student that banking, medical services, professional services, August 2016

Image © Kheng Guan Toh | 123rf.com

If I cover

a topic in my

“Competing with Analytics” course, in the

mind of students that becomes

“analytics.”

ORMS Today

| 29

Defining analytics THROUGH EYES OF STUDENTS

It’s difficult

graphic arts, manufactured products and many other situations. In all these examples, the claimed revenue gains (supported by “management”) were significant and in some cases spectacular.

to charge

a million dollars

Reasons for Project Success There are, of course, many possible explanations for the apparent success of these projects. Perhaps the claimed gains are a mirage? I doubt this to be true in all cases since once these managers have proved that gains are possible, they have often hired analytics people to push these ideas forward. I also receive many e-mails from former students long after the course is over updating me on how “pricing analytics” has transformed their organizations. In some cases I have checked organizational websites and seen market segmentation with variable prices by segment live and in color long after the grades were in. A second explanation might be that the “before” situation was so ugly that spending a bit of time studying the issue and imposing a slightly less ugly solution produced the observed benefits. If this is the case, then surely this fits one of the claimed benefits of our analytics approach; that analyzing and systematically laying out a problem situation will improve the understanding of a complex issue and will enable the situation to be better managed with the associated benefits. The explanation that I offer is that sometimes the body of research in analytics can be reduced to a set of high-level heuristics, and that applying these heuristics in a sensible and carefully controlled way will capture a high percentage of the gains available from using analytics. As an example, if you are selling a service and you identify high- and low-demand market segments (either by time or by customer), and then price the high-demand segments high and the low-demand segments low and jiggle prices around fairly sensibly so as to meet sales targets, you will capture a very high percentage of the potential revenue gains. If you push this further by collecting sales/demand data, building demand models, determining “optimal prices” and installing software to calculate/implement/manage the revenue analytics, you will capture additional revenues, but perhaps not as much as you might expect. If this is the case, the majority of the benefit from the transformation of the firm to an analytics-driven firm comes from the adaptation of an

for a

piece of paper that has on it

“price high when demand

is high, price low when demand

is low.”

30 | ORMS Today

August 2016

analytics-driven thinking about prices, not from the details of the analytics. Quick and Dirty This is not a new idea. Gene Woolsey’s book (“Operations Research for Immediate Application: A Quick and Dirty Manual” [1]) advocated and demonstrated that often very simple models applied quickly could produce fast savings and be a hit with management. One difference today is that we have been modeling for some time, and we know that if we model this particular situation the results will generally look like this, so we can implement the result without re-doing the model. Of course, it’s difficult to charge a million dollars for a piece of paper that has on it “price high when demand is high, price low when demand is low,” although it might be possible to charge that amount for an extensive data collection/modeling effort that produces this same basic advice.The interesting issue is how much value does the advanced analytics add, over and above a heuristic application of the basic concepts? Student models that perform optimizations in Excel reinforce the idea that the value of analytics often lies in the approach and not the details. When I look at students’ Excel sheets I often find a veritable rats nest of =IF(..), =MAX(..), and /or =VLOOKUP(..) functions inside the optimization model and so the students are trying to optimize potentially highly non-linear problems. Apparently students fiddle around performing multiple runs until they come up with a solution they like, and then they implement the solution leading to a claim of significant benefits. If these students had the advanced analytical skills to properly formulate and optimize their models, I wonder how much the benefits would have increased. In a similar vein, the project that has claimed the highest benefit (perhaps a one-time saving of $100 million) involved collecting the data necessary to carefully cost out three activities within a major North American company and then optimizing the distribution of workload among these activities. The “advanced analytics” content of this work was a three-variable Excel solver model. The huge benefit of this work clearly came from the analytical approach to issue identification, data collection, careful basic data analysis and costing and the effective implementation of the findings as a new North American “strategy.” ormstoday.informs.org

These examples strongly suggest that much modeling, which in turns adds value to the deof the benefit of analytics arises from the anacision-maker. Often, very simple models produce lytical problem-solving approach, and while the substantial benefits. “advanced analytics” is the cherry on the top, in I encourage INFORMS to seize this broad view some (perhaps many) situations, it might be quite of analytics going forward. ORMS a small cherry. Peter C. Bell (pbell@ivey.ca) is a professor of Often we appear to be focusing on the demanagement science at the Ivey School of Business at Western University in Ontario, Canada. He is a past velopment and application of advanced theory or recipient of the INFORMS Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS algorithms to try to get a few points closer to Practice, served as chair of the 2013 and 2014 INFORMS the true optimum solution when we know that Franz Edelman Prize Competition and as 2014 and 2015 the data we are using is rough and probably outchair of CPMS: The Practice Section of INFORMS. He is a of-date, so the result is a really good solution to frequent invited contributor to OR/MS Today, particularly an approximate problem. My data suggests that the annual special issue on “Innovative Education.” sometimes we might do better by focusing on cleaning up the data, improving our understandREFERENCES ing of the real issue, and implementing much Woolsey and H. S. Swanson, 1969, 1975, “Operations Research for Immediate Application: faster heuristics to find a decent answer to a 1. G. A Quick and Dirty Manual,” Harper and Row. problem that is closer to reality. 2. D.H. Gensch, N.A. Aversa and S.P. Moore, 1990, “A Choice-Modeling Market Information We in analytics tend to think that the “anSystem that Enabled ABB Electric to Expand its Market Share,” Interfaces, Vol. 20, No. 1 (January/February). swer” we derive to an issue is the end-point, but for management it is often a starting point. The “answer” is usually delivered to a highly intelligent manager (or team) who has a thorough understanding of the business and the issue, and who then merges our analytics work with personal experience and a variety of opinion into planning a path forward. After choosing a course of action, manWhether you’re a student or employer, agers implement change, monitor learn how our graduate-level engineering the situation carefully and make and business team projects benefit everyone corrections. It is common in busiinvolved with high-impact, high ROI projects ness strategy to say that the success such as: of a chosen strategy is “all in the • Lean process design and implementation implementation.” The same can be • Manufacturing rationalization plan said of analytics; successful analyt• Strategic site assessment ics can be simple models imple• Supply chain implementation plan mented very effectively. • Strategic Capacity Analysis A quote I use every term to • New product/process development strategy introduce students to analytics • Product complexity analysis comes from Daniel Elwing, former • Plant floor layout president and CEO of ABB Electric, who said [2]: “[Analytics] is not a Submission Deadline Project proposals are due December 1, 2016 project or a set of techniques; it for projects starting in summer 2017. Contact is a process, a way of thinking and Jon Grice at gricej@umich.edu or (734) 647-2220. managing.” Along with “a way of thinking” and a “process” that starts with data collection, analytics Learn more at adds value to the data through

ARE YOU READY FOR A TAUBER TEAM?

tauber.umich.edu

August 2016

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INNOVATIVE EDUCATION

Owl speaks lion

Communicating analytical results to senior decision-makers.

By Jeff Kline

32 | ORMS Today

August 2016

he admiral nodded in agreement! Since he had no background in operations analysis, I was pleasantly surprised he was following my explanation of integer linear programming used in the newly developed theater ballistic missile defense decision aid I was presenting. Maybe I will explain the history of the simplex algorithm next! No, wait. Was that a nodding of understanding or was he falling asleep? Rats, his eyes were drooping. Then he perked up enough to say, “Excuse me, but let me ask this. Is the math right?” “Well, yes sir” I responded, “but, like all models, its efficacy is dependent on the quality of the input data.” “Sure, sure,” he said. “Will it give our planning staff a quick ‘what-if’ tool to rapidly explore different courses of action and their risks?” “Yes sir,” I responded. “Fine,” he answered. “Let’s test it out in the next major theater ballistic war game.” As he was dismissing me he turned to his assistant and said, “Now, what is my next meeting?” I guess he did not want to learn about the simplex algorithm. ormstoday.informs.org

Almost all senior analysts have similar stories on how they learned not to brief a senior executive.They will tell you organizational lions respond to overly detailed briefings in various ways including confusion, boredom, anxiety, anger, impatience or any combination thereof. Not only is the analytical work’s value diminished, but the analyst’s future contributions may be questioned in the eyes of the executive.The art of communicating analytical work to The first step for “owls” is to know your “lion.” senior executives is an integral part of Image of Owl © Vaclav Volrab | 123rf.com. Image of Lion © Michal Bednarek | 123rf.com; any analytical endeavor, and it is best learned through practice. In the next few paragraphs we course to follow.That said, a global constant to show It is the discuss observations and lessons learned from various relevance to a profit-oriented lion is demonstrating senior analysts, with an eye toward accelerating a junior whether a decision will make money, or save it. analyst’s maturity in the “translation art” of owl to lion. For policy- and service-oriented lions, showing efficiencies or money savings will capture interest. Know Your Lion to communicate It is the analyst’s or owl’s responsibility to ensure he or Be Concise, Clear and to the Point she communicates the relevance of analytical work as Then there is the speaking part. Albert Einstein alconcisely as possible in the executive’s, or lion’s, view. legedly said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t A demonstration of analytical brilliance is not appreunderstand it well enough.” Using the same vociated, but a work’s usefulness to reduce uncertainty cabulary as the executive is essential. I have learned of in decisions or streamlining processes certainly is. that reading business books written by analysts like The first step is to know your lion. Almost all are Douglas Hubbard and Sam Savage provides a way to very busy and on the go. Brevity is essential. Some excommunicate analytical concepts to a larger audiecutives already value analytical input and are comfortence. Savage’s example of using the term “uncertain able with data-driven decision-making. Some are owls number” instead of “random variable” is illustrative. as concisely themselves, which means that transparency in the anaCounsel written specifically for giving analytical lytical work’s limitations are expected and valued.The presentations is also useful. Jerry Brown in “How to executive’s time and experience will influence how Write About Operations Research” (PHALANX, best to send your message for actionable receipt. 2004,Vol. 37, No. 3) poses five questions to answer in the Next, understand the executive’s view of the problem when communicating analytical results: or issue the analysis addresses. Is it a production line deci- 1. What is the problem? sion, a marketing opportunity, an acquisition question or 2. Why is the problem important? a political decision? The category of problem influences 3. How will the problem be solved without the contribution analysis makes to that decision. For exyour help? ample, optimization can directly influence delivery truck 4. What are you doing to solve the problem? schedules to minimize delivery time.A truck scheduler 5. How will we know when you have succeeded? will use it to save driver time or make more deliveries. However, in the political realm there may be conflicting E.S. Levine in his August 2013 article, “Good interests, opposing objectives and hence different ratioGuidance for Presentation of Data,” in Analytics nalities, and multiple organizations involved. In politics, magazine provides solid advice. He says strive sometimes the best course of action may be what can be for clarity (simple, direct, efficient and effective), implemented, instead what is optimum according to a transparency (clearly defined method and assumptions), set of metrics. In this domain, analysis may be used to asintegrity (defensible and sound conclusions) and sess opportunity costs for alternatives that show promise humility (removing the analyst from the message; using technical rationales but are not politically impleanother way of saying don’t show how smart you are, mentable due to conflicting interests. but how relevant your message is). How best to present your analysis is influenced One straightforward way to create your presentaby the executive’s view of which domain the tion is to use the order of the analytical process you used problem occupies and the freedom to select a in your effort. For example, make the first draft cover

analyst’s responsibility the relevance analytical work

as possible executive’s view.

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Communicating results TO DECISION-MAKERS

In two sentences we cover the

problem and threat level, the

simulation results for

risk level and the

sensitive parameters.

problem formulation, objectives, key assumptions, values and criteria, boundaries and constraints, generation of alternatives, analytical method or model, analytical results comparing alternatives, sensitivity analysis, and recommendations or conclusions. If and only if your lion was once an owl, this 50-slide presentation may be sufficient. Otherwise, move the recommendations or conclusions slide up front and pare the presentation down to 10 or fewer slides that give direct evidence supporting your recommendation or conclusion. Save all the rest as back-up to respond to potential questions. That makes the wording of your first slide or leading point critical. It must present the problem and recommendation as concisely as possible.Think of this as a long bumper sticker. For example, to an Australian fleet commander assigning forces across the northern maritime border, the first slide showing simulation results reads: “With three to five illegal immigrant boats attempting passage across the Timor Sea every day, two patrol aircraft and five ships are needed on station to maintain a 95 percent chance of intercepting all of them.The issue driving required ship numbers is the time to intercept and inspect the boats before others make landfall.” In two sentences we cover the problem and threat level, the simulation results for a certain risk level and the most sensitive parameters driving the results. The remaining 10 or fewer slides cover assumptions, concept of operations, model, sensitivity and areas of uncertainty that support this conclusion. Note I’ve suggested 10 or fewer slides twice now – well, now, three times! A general rule is the more senior the executive, the fewer the slides. Recall the importance of brevity. The use of the “headline” or concise summary up front can carry danger, too. Our colleague, Jerry Brown, once briefed a U.S. admiral with these words: “Following this optimized schedule is like

creating an extra aircraft carrier.” It was Jerry’s misfortune that this admiral was responsible for justifying how many aircraft carriers we should have in the fleet. Result: Lion eats owl. Lesson: Know your lion. Perhaps Jerry should have focused on the ability to complete more missions, faster. Having back-up material is important to keep the owl off the lion’s menu. If senior executives are uncomfortable with the study’s results, they will question the assumptions, scenario or situation, and will want to know the quality of the data. Ready-to-go back-up slides and material help you answer these concerns. Executives rarely question the mathematics or model – they trust you on that score (unless your lion was once an owl).They may ask the question, “Has the model been verified?” But, if the lion is policy-oriented, what he or she really wants to know is, “Has it been used before by another decision-maker?” Reassurance is sought that there is not additional risk in the decision by relying on an untested model. Particularly valued is if the past use had a positive result for some other decision-maker.The other two ways a model is affirmed in an executive’s mind are: 1) if its results are within their experience (seen before in the real world), and/or 2) if the results are in line with their intuitive reasoning (makes sense). If the answer to any of these questions is no, you will need to be able to explain in detail why not. Use Headlines and Graphs Now for some advice on presentation slides: Use as few as words as possible, and feature as many graphs and charts as needed. Title each chart like a newspaper headline that explains the chart’s or graph’s message. For example, a chart comparing a delivery company’s current truck loading method with a

SENIOR ANALYSTS (WISE OLD OWLS)

SENIOR EXECUTIVES (OLD LIONS)

Have a five-minute version and a two-minute version

If I have only five minutes, so do you

Clearly answer: What? So What? What now?

Don’t put the executive back in math class

Limit your presentation slides: Save brilliance for back-up slides

It is not necessary to share with me everything you have learned in reaching this point in your life

Admit ignorance when you don’t know

Do not raise an issue unless you also provide recommendations

Be prepared to talk without slides

Give me the main points early

Send your presentation ahead

If you can’t answer the question, say so and get back with me. Anything else is a waste of time.

Practice and murder board before briefing (with a parliament of owls)

More pictures, fewer words

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ormstoday.informs.org

new one should read, “New packing method saves drivers 30 minutes daily,” not “Results.” Be prepared to present a crystal-clear legend voice-over for each graph or chart. For illustrations of estimated returns for a range of courses of action, you cannot know in advance where a lion will decide to choose, so be prepared for any alternative. If we get this right, our executive presentation may consist of only one or two slides – the conclusions and the analytical graph that shows how we came to those conclusions. POTUS’ (president of the United States) analytical presentations are frequently just that. Wise Owls and Old Lions To reap additional lessons in communicating analytical results, I conducted an informal poll of senior analysts and senior executives on their thoughts. I asked them to write down what single phrase they would put in a fortune cookie to provide advice to junior analysts on communicating analytical results to senior executives. They provided the following wisdom to share with you. Note some recurring themes.

In industries where technical rationale prevails, such as engineering, technology, manufacturing, communications and data services, analytics’ value is naturally understood. In these areas we need only ensure we deliver our message effectively. In areas where other rationales dominate, such as public policy, national security, politics and international relations analytics, value must be learned by senior executives, which makes demonstrating the relevance of our work that much more important. The better we communicate the analytical results to those who use it, the more analytics and its practitioners will be appreciated. The more we are appreciated, the more influence we can have on making better decisions for industry and society. ORMS Jeff Kline (captain, U.S. Navy, ret.) is a professor of practice in the Operations Research Department at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., where he teaches joint campaign analysis and executive risk assessment and coordinates maritime security education programs. Kline supports applied analytical research in maritime operations and security, theater ballistic missile defense and future force composition studies. He received the 2011 Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS Practice from INFORMS.

The better we

communicate the

analytical results, the

more analytics will be

appreciated.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS 2017

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS IS MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2016. Are you the best in OR/MS/Analytics education? The UPS George D. Smith Prize is created in the spirit of strengthening ties between industry and the schools of higher education that graduate young practitioners of operations research. INFORMS, with the help of CPMS, will award the prize for the effective and innovative preparation of students to be good practitioners of operations research, management science, or analytics to an academic department or program. The prize will include a trophy and $10,000 award. The UPS George D. Smith Prize will be announced at the 2017 Edelman Gala at the INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research, in Las Vegas, NV.

For more information, questions can be sent to Robin Lougee, 2017 Smith Prize Chair at rlougee@us.ibm.com.

www.informs.org/smithprize

2016 UPS Smith Prize Winners Carnegie Mellon University, H. John Heinz III College, School of Information Systems and Management, and School of Public Policy and Management

ing ties hen t g en str

ups george d smith prize August 2016

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INNOVATIVE EDUCATION EDITOR’S NOTE: Each year, INFORMS awards the UPS George D. Smith Prize to an academic department or program for effective and innovative preparation of students intent on pursuing careers as practitioners of operations research. This year’s UPS Prize went to Carnegie Mellon University’s H. John Heinz III College’s graduate schools of Information Systems and Management and Public Policy and Management. The other two finalists included the U.S. Air Force Academy’s interdisciplinary operations research program and North Carolina State University’s Institute for Advanced Analytics. OR/MS Today invited all three finalists to briefly describe their outstanding programs for this special “Innovative Education” issue. Thanks to UPS Prize Committee Chair Robin Lougee for coordinating the contributed articles that follow.

Profiles of UPS Prize finalists Trio of academic departments/ programs recognized for effective and innovative preparation of O.R. students aiming at the practice sector.

Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy By Ramayya Krishnan, Jon Nehlsen and Alfred Blumstein The Heinz College is home to two highly ranked graduate schools: 1) Information Systems and Management and 2) Public Policy and Management, a deliberate structure that exists only at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). This gives the College great natural advantages in incorporating in our curricula cutting-edge information technologies and analytic methods that were invented or perfected at CMU. It also means that Heinz students emerge with the capability to address a wide array of important societal problems, and to bring analytics and analytic decision processes to bear on issues of global importance. Our approach The Heinz College’s approach to analytics education resides on the bedrock principle that analytic thinking and methods only matter if they can be used to solve real problems. The formula is simple: Analytics + IT + Deployment = Real-World Impact

Al Blumstein (center, holding award), Ramayya Krishnan (second from right) and others celebrate Heinz School winning the UPS Prize.

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This approach is important for three reasons. First, analytic thinking and decision-making require the ability to make sense of data in order to structure previously unstructured problems. Second, training in information technology must ormstoday.informs.org

be part of good analytics training, because in the real world, data is often incomplete, resident in disparate systems and subject to poor input processes. Further, existing data often have to be supplemented with data from partners or the Internet, and increasingly, decisions taken based on analytics are implemented using information systems. Technology training helps our graduates solve these problems. Third, individuals within organizations must learn to work within teams and understand how to deal with the biases, politics and path dependencies that characterize real-world problem-solving.The emphasis on deployment skills helps students learn to solve these problems as well. The educational experience we provide students benefits considerably from the distinctive Carnegie Mellon multidisciplinary approach to problemdriven research. Many Heinz College faculty coalesce in industry-funded research centers spanning the following topics: entertainment analytics; healthcare analytics; information security and privacy, risk and regulatory analytics; and smart cities (with a particular focus on public safety and transportation). These centers provide the students with high-quality experiential learning opportunities. The centers supply partners, projects and internships to students while students study alongside our world-renowned thought leaders who assist in answering important applied research questions. This bilateral exchange provides a consistent and effective experience for students. Our History The College’s roots date to 1968, when Richard King Mellon, the philanthropist and business leader who led the effort to clean the air above Pittsburgh in the 1940s and 1950s, decided that a new kind of academic institution was needed to address urban turmoil. He asked Carnegie Mellon to help. At the time, Carnegie Mellon was home to the Graduate School of Industrial Administration (GSIA), which had been a leader in emphasizing analytics to replace case studies for business education. CMU’s response was the School of Urban and Public Affairs (SUPA), and its first dean was William W. Cooper, a distinguished management scientist who founded and was the first president of The Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS). Reflecting on his own career, Cooper emphasized that the mission of SUPA was to “educate men and women for intelligent action.”The “intelligent” would result from a strong analytic curriculum, and the “action” would come from addressing real and important problems, and that theme has been a continuing hallmark even as the school changed its name to honor Sen. John Heinz, a member

The educational

of the school’s advisory board, who died in an airplane accident in 1991. Starting in the late 1980s, the growing importance of infor mation systems was becoming clear. Innovations at CMU’s School of Computer Science and School of Engineering prompted our emphasis on using IT to understand complex social systems and improve public policy. In the 1990s, led by then professor and now dean Ramayya Krishnan, the school built research excellence in addressing problems at the intersection of information technology, public policy and management, and established a master’s degree in information systems (MISM) followed by related degrees in information security policy and management (MSISPM) and a distance program in information technology (MSIT). In 2008, with generous support from the Heinz family, the present structure of the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy was created.

experience benefits from a multidisciplinary

approach to

problemdriven research.

Recent Developments True to these roots, our students steep in a distinctive core curriculum in management science, statistics, microeconomics and management information systems. Additionally, they practice leadership and deployment skills through mandatory training in professional speaking and writing, organizational behavior and meta-curricular leadership training activities with partners such as the Army War College. Experiential learning through required internships and semester-long capstone projects with startups, global firms and government agencies continues to be an important component of their experience. These activities ensure that students spend substantial time deploying their skills in the real world, enabling them to take off running when they graduate. The most recent innovation at the Heinz College recognizes that the traditional analytic training in operations research and econometrics needs to be supplemented with education in the tools and techniques of machine learning and data mining. As new sources of data – both structured and unstructured – become available, this enhanced tool kit will be required to address important societal problems. As a result, both schools established rigorous analytics-focused tracks to augment their core programs and offer multiple opportunities to students to apply these methods and tools to solve problems, in some cases with teams of students from other schools at Carnegie Mellon University.The combination of this advanced training and the aforementioned real-world practice equips students poised for intelligent action. Since its founding, more than 11,000 students have graduated from Heinz programs in Public Policy and Management and Information Systems and August 2016

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Profiles of UPS PRIZE FINALISTS

Management, and they have pursued successful careers in all sectors of the global economy. Professor Jon Caulkins describes the Heinz College approach succinctly:“We put it together in a package that allows our students to take these tools and make the world a better place.”

Only the best are able

Ramayya Krishnan is dean of the H. John Heinz III College and the W. W. Cooper and Ruth F. Cooper Professor of Management Science and Information Systems at Carnegie Mellon University. Jon Nehlsen is associate dean for Partnerships and Communication at the H. John Heinz III College. He is an alumnus of the Heinz College and of the Wharton School. Alfred Blumstein is the J. Erik Jonsson University Professor of Urban Systems and Operations Research Emeritus and former dean (1986-93) of the Heinz College. Blumstein, Krishnan and Caulkins are elected Fellows of INFORMS.

to join the

Long Blue Line of

graduates.

U.S. Air Force Academy’s operations research program By Lt. Col. Jesse Pietz and Joe Wilck The United States Air Force Academy offers a four-year bachelor of science degree in operations research. Our interdisciplinary operations research program is jointly administered by four academic departments in order to leverage the combined strengths of computer science, economics, management and mathematics. The operations research program is in its 50th year at the academy, where it continues to support the academy’s mission: “To educate, train and inspire men and women to become officers of character motivated to lead the United States Air Force in service to our nation.” With more than 30 members, our faculty consists of civilian professors, senior military members and junior military instructors. Civilian military members

Cadets are challenged with a demanding schedule of military training, athletic and academic obligations.

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bring many years of expertise in their respective fields, while nearly all of our military faculty members are operations research analysts who bring recent operational experience into the classroom.The military faculty members generally are on three- or four-year assignments at the academy; thus, their experiences of applying operations research to support various Air Force organizations serve as examples of operations research practice and reinforce the concepts and methods we teach in our curriculum. The Long Blue Line Our admission standards are among the highest in the nation. Our cadets are challenged with a demanding schedule of military training, athletic and academic obligations. Only the best are able to join the Long Blue Line of graduates, many of whom become frontline operations research practitioners as Air Force analysts. In fact, the academy is the primary producer of operations research analysts to the Air Force. Our operations research graduates include a Rhodes Scholar, Fortune 100 executives and general-level officers. The secret to the success of our program is an applied senior capstone, where teams of cadets consult for military, corporate, local government and nonprofit organizations in yearlong analysis projects to address real-world problems. The results of these projects have been overwhelmingly positive. Cadets routinely garner awards in competitions at student conferences, the client sponsors rave about the results (and seek to sponsor projects the following year), and the academic outcomes are met. Recent sponsors include: DARPA, U.S. Northern Command, Lockheed Martin, Walmart, AlloSource, Healing Warriors Program and Sandia National Laboratories. These projects bolster undergraduate research and result in many peer reviewed journal articles, conference presentations and proceedings, and undergraduate awards at national conferences. O.R. is the Core Approximately half of all Air Force Academy graduates take an operations research course to satisfy the academy’s rigorous core requirements. The course, “Systems Analysis,” covers queueing, forecasting, regression, simulation, linear programming, decision analysis and multi-attribute decision-making in Microsoft Excel. This core course ensures that the Air Force Academy develops young officers who are versed in the practice of operations research and inspires future senior leaders to appreciate the insights that operations research and analytics can provide. ormstoday.informs.org

By the numbers: total enrollment of 4,000 cadets, four-year B.S. with 146 total semester hours and 50 percent of all cadets take at least one O.R. course. Lt. Col. Jesse Pietz, Ph.D., CAP, is the chair of the Operations Research Working Group. Joe Wilck, Ph.D., PE, is the assessment coordinator of the Operations Research Working Group. Both are operations research faculty members in the Department of Management at the United States Air Force Academy.

North Carolina State’s Institute for Advanced Analytics By Michael Rappa The Institute for Advanced Analytics at North Carolina State University has been preparing data savvy professionals for leadership in a digital world since 2007. Its mission is to produce the world’s finest practitioners of analytics – individuals who have mastered complex methods and tools for large-scale data modeling, who have a passion for solving challenging problems through teamwork, who are guided by intellectual curiosity, honesty and integrity, and who strive to attain the highest level of professionalism through continuous self-improvement. Interdisciplinary Collaboration The Institute serves as the focal point for interdisciplinary collaboration among faculty in several disciplines, including applied mathematics, computer science, operations research, statistics, finance and marketing science. The Institute’s flagship program is the nation’s first master of science in analytics (MSA) degree. The MSA is an intensive, full-time, 10-month learning experience with an innovative curriculum developed from the ground up exclusively for students in the program. It is N.C. State’s leading master’s degree measured in terms of student outcomes.With average starting salaries approaching six figures and placement rates at or near 100 percent by graduation, MSA graduates are among the University’s most sought-after and highly paid. The MSA prepares students for the challenging task of deriving insights from vast quantities of structured and unstructured data. The novel curriculum is fully integrated and delivered in a lockstep fashion to each cohort of students. Instead of the conventional menu of core and elective courses, the Institute deploys faculty who work closely together in what is more accurately described as curriculum threads.This allows diverse disciplinary subject mat-

ter to be carefully calibrated and melded seamlessly in a manner that enhances student learning. In addition to the technical subject matter, students receive personalized coaching in professional development, including teamwork and communication skills, as an integral part of their education. At the core of the curriculum is the practicum: a team-based learning experience stretching eight months that gives students an opportunity to conduct real-world analytics projects using data from sponsoring organizations (confidentially and with no fees attached).The projects are as varied as they are challenging, Home of the Institute for Advanced Analytics at with complicated data sets in the North Carolina State University gigabyte to terabyte range. Partnering with SAS has enabled our students to work with the same software tools widely used in industry. Past projects total more than 100, with 80 sponsors is to spanning virtually every industry segment and state and federal agencies, including some of the world’s best-known brands. Project outcomes have yielded the significant benefits to sponsors.

Its mission produce

Highly Selective Admission to the MSA program is highly selective. The Institute accepts as few as one in eight applicants, with a current enrollment of 120 students annually. In addition to being the University’s most selective graduate program, it is also one of the largest and fastest growing. Among 100 fields of study, the MSA ranks in the top five in terms of the number of degrees awarded annually by the graduate school. Since the Institute’s inception, the field of analytics education has grown dramatically. The early success of the MSA made it a model for other analytics programs. The Institute opened its doors to hundreds of visitors from universities around the world, sharing the MSA curriculum and our faculty’s wealth of experience in educating analytics professionals. In ways both large and small, the novelty of the MSA served as an inspiration for what has surely been one of the fastest-growing segments of graduate education in the past decade. ORMS

world’s

finest practitioners of

analytics.

Michael Rappa is Goodnight Director and Distinguished University Professor in the Institute for Advanced Analytics at North Carolina State University.

August 2016

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INNOVATIVE EDUCATION

Mandate for STEM educators

T Providing students with the background needed for tomorrow’s analytics jobs.

By Dursun Delen

40 | ORMS Today

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he analytical skills gap is real and it’s growing. By 2018, the United States could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills, according to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute. Employers will also need an additional 1.5 million managers and analysts with the experience and expertise to use the analysis of big data to make effective and efficient decisions. For educators, especially those with a STEM focus, there hasn’t been a mandate this clear since the space race of the 1960s. This time, instead of the moon, the goal is to conquer the data avalanche that is affecting every organization – private or public sector. And while there is no government push with billions of dollars behind it, the changing landscape of technology and data is driving a shift in strategy within academia. Where does that put higher educators? It seems like a perpetual game of catch up.Technology can be a tricky area for education for two primary reasons. First, technology – especially the infrastructure in terms of IT support as well as the computers themselves – is traditionally a cost-prohibitive barrier. Second, technology is always changing. If a student enters a four-year university to study a field as dynamic as analytics, the information they learn as a freshman may be somewhat outdated by the time they graduate. How do you start? It starts by helping students learn the fundamentals through the most advanced technologies. With this experience, they can be prepared to take on the challenges of the future via analytics. ormstoday.informs.org

What Today’s Students Need to Learn While terms like “big data,” “deep learning,” “cognitive computing” and “machine learning” garner all the buzz, analytics – which serves as the encapsulation of all of these buzz words – is like any other field of study. Students first have to understand the basics. After all, you don’t start calculus without a solid understanding of algebra and trigonometry. The same applies to analytics: Students have to understand some of the fundamental aspects before hitting the job market. Students have to understand the basics. You don’t start calculus without a solid understanding of algebra There are a variety of conand trigonometry. cepts that any analytics professional Image © Sergey Nivens | 123rf.com; needs to know. Here are three areas that can provide a foundation for a long career from a broader career in data science to more For in analytics: specialized knowledge in things like cognitive Descriptive analytics. Descriptive analytics (escomputing and machine learning. pecially in statistical terms) have been around for Predictive analytics. Predictive analytics builds especially those hundreds of years. The first well-publicized popuon descriptive statistics and uses more advanced lation data collection project took place in 1749 in statistical algor ithms and machine-lear ning with a Sweden.The Swedish government wanted to know methods. The goal is to identify likely future the spread of its population to help allot military outcomes based on historical data. With predictive resources more effectively. While the project was analytics, users can go beyond a snapshot of the there rather simple (by today’s standards), all of the statisway things are. With a better forecast, predictive tics and mathematics were manual, making this quite analytics can deliver new insights that lead to an undertaking for an 18th-century organization. better, more effective actions. Put simply, descriptive analytics provides Predictive models use previous results to a a summary of collected data points using a develop models that can be used to predict values sample of the population or an entire data set. A for different or new data. The modeling results in descriptive analytics model help you understand predictions that represent a probability of the target this clear what happened and to some extend why it variable (for example, future revenue) based on a set happened. Although it is the foundation of other of input variables. This is different from descriptive forms of analytics, there are plenty of metrics of models that help you understand what happened this kind still in use, including: or diagnostic models that help you understand key • central tendency (mean, median and mode) relationships. • dispersion (variance, standard deviation, range) A 2014 TDWI report found that the top five of the • relationship (covariance, correlation, crossthings predictive analytics are used for is to: 1) tabulation) identify trends, 2) understand customers, 3) improve • augmented with simple graphics (histogram, business performance, 4) drive strategic decisionbox-plot, scatter plot, correlation, regression) making and 5) predict behavior. • business intelligence Prescriptive analytics. Prescriptive analytics is • on-demand/ad-hoc reporting the highest echelon in the three-layered analytics • multi-dimensional modeling / OLAP (cubes, hierarchy. The goal is to identify the best (i.e., drill-down/roll-up, slicing/dicing) optimal) decision (i.e., choice) from the large • data warehousing (to support decision support) (sometimes infinite) number of feasible options. • KPI visualizations (dashboards and scorecards) While descr iptive and predictive analytics establish the landscape of options and choices, A good understanding of these basic elements prescriptive analytics is used to sort them out business reporting is fundamental, for everything and find the most plausible one to base the

educators,

STEM focus, hasn’t been mandate

since the space race 1960s.

August 2016

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Mandate for STEM EDUCATORS

Understanding the

philosophies and techniques behind

analytics is only

part of the equation.

decision on. The techniques used in prescriptive analytics include optimization (linear, non-linear), simulation (stochastic and deterministic enabling a wide range of what-if analyses), and multicriteria decision-making techniques. Figure 1 depicts the three progressive (in terms of the degree of analytics sophistication/intelligence) layers of analytics along with the questions answered and techniques used for each of them. Naturally, this is a field that continues to grow and develop as new techniques emerge and technologies adapt to use these new techniques. Students studying predictive analytics will have the ability to go into some of the more cutting-edge fields of study in the field of analytics. A critical use of prescriptive analytics comes with data that has not been traditionally part of many analytics environments.With the advent of big data, the scope of analytics has widened to include processing of what is often called unstructured or semi-structured data (implying that the data is not necessarily structured for the computer programs to readily process). This would include things like text, audio, images and video. For decades, analytics focused on tabular, database-driven data. This information was easier to organize and orient for analysis, especially when compared with a text document. While there is metadata within a table to explain what’s in each

Figure 1: Progressive layers of analytics (descriptive, predictive and prescriptive). Source: Delen, D., 2015, “Real-World Data Mining: Applied Business Analytics and Decision Making,” FT Press.

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column or row, there are few such indicators in a text document. However, text files are a potential gold mine of insights that could help an organization better understand its overall health and day-to-day operations. Users in today’s analytics environment need to understand how to use unstructured and semi-structured text such as invoices, comments and other free-form fields. Text analytics is becoming more important in the era of social media. One of the goals of text analytics is to accurately extract entities, facts and, more importantly, sentiment. The information from feeds from Twitter, Facebook and other social media networks can provide information about a company’s perception among its customers and targeted customers. If students have the ability to manipulate and review this type of information, their skills will be in high demand. Tools to Educate Next Generation of Analytics Professionals Understanding the philosophies and techniques behind analytics is only part of the equation. While in school, students need hands-on training to apply these techniques to learn the strategies needed to succeed in the business world. There are a host of technologies available that can help students start developing the skills they will need in the professional world. Many universities around the United States and abroad have started degree programs specific to analytics both at the graduate and undergraduate level. Having a degree in analytics or a closely related field has become a significant differentiator in the job market. Coupled with hands-on experience and technical skills, analytics students often receive multiple attractive job offers even before they graduate. Putting analytics in the hands of students is now easier than ever. Once, professors needed labs full of expensive desktops and servers – along with purchased software – to teach the latest techniques in analytics. This was a cost barrier that many schools could not surmount. Today’s academic environments can employ much more cost-effective and nimble environments to create a responsive training environment in analytics. Technology advances have improved both the delivery of software and their power with the uninitiated user. All of this is helping more schools put the power of analytics into the hands of their students. Cloud-based deployments. One of the most powerful changes in the software world has ormstoday.informs.org

Figure 2: Three steps to using TUN.

been the delivery of technology via cloudbased technologies. By having software deployed through a massive, virtual network of computers, universities can deploy and maintain analytics technology more easily than ever. The key benefit comes on the hardware side. Accessing cloud-based applications requires nothing more than an Internet browser. Some even work on a mobile device. So, a university setting up a highend analytics lab doesn’t need to purchase a set of powerful desktops and servers. A simple laptop connected to the Internet can provide access to the latest technologies. Cloud-based capabilities make it easier for software providers to get technology in the hands of students. An example would be the Teradata University Network (TUN) [1], a consortium of companies working together to deliver analytics to college students. TUN provides tools and resources to almost 5,000 registered faculty members from 2,500 universities in 115 countries to ensure their students receive experience with various technologies. This would be difficult with a traditional model of software deployment, but with cloud deployments, it’s easier to put the right technology in students’ hands. TUN is not limited to just cloud-based software platforms; it also contains a variety of teaching resources from syllabus material to case studies, data sets and scripted videos. Starting to use TUN as an analytics instructor requires only three steps (see Figure 2). Easy to use technology. For years, the use of analytics technology required a deep understanding of a coding language to manipulate the data for analysis and perform the analytics tasks. Because of this requirement, the initial generations of analytics pro-

Figure 3: Screen shot of SAS Visual Analytics.

fessionals were, in some ways, more like application developers than analysts. They spent much of their time building and refining models, and the outcome went to a business person to evaluate and use to make decisions. A modern analytics environment operates in a much different way. Today’s analysts – sometimes called data scientists – use GUI-based tools to replicate the work that was once done at the code level. They can visually make connections in the data and try many different techniques to see how a new analytics technique works. In the academic world, it’s important that the next generation of analytics professionals is aware of these more modern interfaces and how to apply them to real-world challenges. SAS Visual Analytics, for example, is a technology that allows users to visually explore data and see how to make connections between different data elements. Figure 3 illustrates a dashboard that shows relationships in different data elements through several charts and graphs. This type of technology is becoming more commonplace in the business world. It allows people who are doing the analysis to work more closely with their business counterparts. Students can use this technology to understand how to collaborate on analytics projects in school, and then take those skills to the business world. For instance, MBAs, less technically savvy university students – the business managers of the future – can easily use these tools to understand and appreciate the value of data and analytics in the world of business management. ORMS

Cloud-based capabilities make it

easier for software providers to get

technology in the

hands of students.

Dursun Delen (dursun.delen@okstate.edu) is a professor of business analytics within the Department of Management Science and Information Systems at the Spears School of Business, Oklahoma State University.

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INNOVATIVE EDUCATION

O.R. without borders

M INFORMS leaders join Mongolia’s strategic efforts to emphasize analytics in its education system.

By Mendsaikhan Sonomtseren, Altantsetseg Sodnomtseren and Khuslen Zorigt

44 | ORMS Today

August 2016

ongolia is situated in the center of Asia, sharing a 3,543-kilometer border with the Russian Federation to the north and a 4,710-kilometer border with the People’s Republic of China to the south. The country is comprised of great plains, steppes and rolling hills, as well as several mountain ranges and lakes – both fresh water and salt water. Mongolia is the 19th largest nation in the world by size of its territory and the 138th largest in population (as of 2014), making it the least densely populated country in the world. About one-third of Mongolia’s 3 million people live in rural areas, and the majority of the rural population is composed of nomadic pastoralists. The population is increasingly young and urban; almost one-third of the population is under 18, and the capital city of Ulaanbaatar has grown rapidly over the past 20 years. Though the Mongolian education system has to meet the challenges of serving a population that is both urban and nomadic and is dispersed over a wide area, the country’s literacy rate of more than 97 percent [1] is one of the highest in the world.The number of students enrolled in Mongolian educational institutions of all levels reached 742,000 in the 2015-16 academic year. In 2015, the nation’s total expenditure on the science sector was just 0.1 percent of its GDP. ormstoday.informs.org

Although the education system is well developed with a high literacy rate and a low dropout rate (0.7 percent of children aged 6-15 in the 2011-2012 academic year), the study of operations research and statistics in Mongolian curricula is limited. Neither operations research nor statistics are generally part of high school curricula, so the students lack necessary applied mathematics skills. Furthermore, lack of exposure to statistics in particular creates difficulties for Mongolian students when they apply for admission to undergraduate programs with universities in developed countries. In addition, neither operations research nor statistics coursework is included in most undergraduate programs in any major offered by universities in Mongolia. Therefore, developing secondary school statistics education programs, creating resources and building capacities in these areas are an important part of school curriculum reform in Mongolia.The question for the Mongolian government and its people is: How do we accomplish this daunting and formidable task? In its first step in achieving this objective, the National Registration and Statistics Office of Mongolia (NRSO) and the National University of Mongolia (NUM) recently co-hosted a series of events under the theme of “Applied Statistics: Teaching, Research and Business Innovation.” The events were organized jointly with INFORMS President Edward H. Kaplan of Yale University, James L. Rosenberger of Penn State University and James J. Cochran of the University of Alabama. The events represented the first step in a major initiative designed to support Mongolian high schools and universities efforts to teach students basic statistics and operations research literacy and introduce them to careers in these professions. The week began with a series of meetings between representatives of the NRSO and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, along with professors Kaplan and Cochran.The participants discussed in detail the current state of operations research and statistics education in Mongolia, the goals for introducing content in these areas into high school and undergraduate curricula and strategies to accomplish these objectives.The meetings underscored the importance of an applications orientation, and suggested several ways in which INFORMS, the American Statistical Association and U.S. universities could assist Mongolia in achieving its objectives. Four events were held throughout the remainder of the week in support of these efforts, starting with a full-day workshop, “Basic Operations Research for Statisticians,” held at the National University of Mongolia.The workshop consisted of two coordinated sessions: “Introduction to Linear Pro-

Altantsetseg Sodnomtseren, Demberel Ayush, James J. Cochran, Mendsaikhan Sonomtseren, Edward H. Kaplan, Oyunchimeg Dandar and Ganchimeg Mijiddorj (l-r) meet at the NRSO Headquarters in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

Lack of exposure

gramming for Statisticians” and “Stochastic/Probabilistic Models.” The first session, led by the Professor Cochran, covered the basics of linear programming. Participants learned about problem formulation, sensitivity analysis and interpretation of solutions. Active learning exercises throughout the session highlighted the extension of linear programming to integer programming while demonstrating the Excel-based Solver software. In the afternoon session, Professor Kaplan outlined numerous, interesting and provocative examples of stochastic modeling in operations research. Participants learned and explored random incidence, Markov chains and Little’s Theorem and queueing theory using numerical calculations supported with Excel and the freely available Queueing ToolPak add-in. Applications included: how just missing a bus can reduce your expected waiting time, why your friends have more friends than you do, managing a prison system, cancer progression, cyber terrorism, blood banking, estimating the size of hidden queues such as undetected HIV infections or undetected terror plots, and staffing service systems. More than 80 enthusiastic participants, including instructors from Mongolian universities and managers from Mongolian businesses, participated in the workshop. Several indicated that they had never seen these any of the concepts presented and could envision several applications to their own work, while others indicated that they had seen some of these concepts but understood them much better after the sessions. Many participants also expressed appreciation for the novel approaches to presenting the material and said they August 2016

to statistics

creates difficulties for

Mongolian students when they

apply for admission to universities in

developed countries.

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Introducing O.R. IN MONGOLIAN SCHOOLS

The students were

enthusiastic about the

case method, and they

enjoyed the challenge of working on an

open-ended problem.

saw alternatives to their classroom approaches that they were eager to try for themselves. The following day, professors Cochran and Rosenberger led a half-day workshop,“Introducing Statistics into the High School Mathematics Curriculum,” that featured discussions on how high school mathematics teachers can integrate basic probability and statistics concepts into their algebra, geometry and calculus courses; develop statistics courses appropriate for high school students; and integrate these courses into their existing mathematics curricula. Participants learned about topics that can be covered, the order in which they can be covered, and the relationships between some core high school mathematics concepts and concepts in statistics and probability. More than 100 eager mathematics teachers from secondary schools of Ulaanbaatar participated in the workshop. Again, participants indicated that they appreciated seeing new statistical concepts and how they could be used to reinforce discussions on algebra, geometry and calculus, as well as the presentation styles of the two speakers, which was far more interactive than is generally used by teachers in Mongolia. Later that same day, Cochran taught a class of 11thyear secondary school students some basic concepts of statistics using a case that he had written and used in his introductory statistics courses. Several high school mathematics teachers, college mathematics and education instructors, and officials of Mongolia’s Ministry of Education, Culture and Science attended and observed the 90-minute session. After the session, the students and observers participated in a group discussion led by

Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia, has grown rapidly over the past 20 years. Image © qumrran | 123rf.com

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Cochran in which they discussed the class they had just experienced along with issues that could arise in implementing the case method in Mongolian high schools. The students were enthusiastic about the case method, and they enjoyed the challenge of working on an open-ended problem with several potentially correct answers and having an opportunity to justify their answers. The teachers and instructors were intrigued by the case methodology and appreciated the opportunity to observe this demonstration of a teaching method that is not common to Mongolia. A few expressed concerns about finding or developing cases and developing the skills needed to teach and manage a classroom when using the case method. Later in the week, the international conference, “Applied Statistics: Teaching, Research, and Business Innovation” was held at the Best Western Premier Tuushin Hotel in Ulaanbaatar. The conference aimed to provide a forum for academics, researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas and share knowledge on recent developments in operations research, management science, statistics and other related areas. In addition, the conference fostered networking among the conference participants in the core areas of operations management, management science, mathematics, statistics and ICT, while highlighting various applications in these areas. Following the workshops and conference, Cochran and Rosenberger met with H.E. Jennifer Galt, the U.S. Ambassador to Mongolia, and several key members of her staff at the U.S. Embassy in Mongolia. Ambassador Galt indicated that she was very impressed with the events of the week and the progress that had been made, and she indicated that whenever possible, she and her staff would support further efforts toward the objective of the initiatives. Faculty members from many universities and colleges including the National University of Mongolia, Mongolian Education University, State University of Life Sciences and the Institute of Finance and Economics participated and made presentations during the conference. Additionally, representatives of state organizations (NRSO, Mongol Bank, Ministry of Finance, etc), research organizations and industry practitioners also presented research papers at a one-day conference that attracted about 100 attendees. Going forward, these events, which received extensive coverage by the Mongolian media (Internet, television and newspapers), will help the NRSO, Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, and universities in Mongolia initiate efforts to quickly improve students’ understanding and ability to apply basic statistics and operations research to problems ormstoday.informs.org

in commerce and society. The week of events also helped establish a strong network of university faculty, graduate students, high school teachers, business people and government officials who are interested in supporting and contributing to the effort. The authors and our colleagues at the NRSO and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science next plan to work with colleagues in the United States to organize and fund a workshop to be held at the University of Alabama next summer. Plans call for approximately 20 instructors from Mongolian universities to travel to the campus to receive one to two weeks of instruction on how to teach basic applied statistics from several well-respected statistics instructors. The participants will then receive the materials used in the instruction so they can prepare to give the same workshop for their colleagues at their home institutions in Mongolia (with the U.S. instructors’ assistance) in the summer of 2018 and beyond. In this way, Mongolia can build its own statistics capacity, and rapidly expand its high school and college students’ understanding and application of statistics and operations research. ORMS

CALL FOR ENTRIES A $15,000 Competition with a $10,000 First Prize

Application Deadline: October 19, 2016 KEY DATES FOR THE COMPETITION Wednesday, October 19, 2016 Deadline to provide a single pdf document containing a three-page summary of your achievement, and a cover page with a 60-word abstract, and the name, address, phone number, and affiliation of each author.

Monday, December 12, 2016 Finalists will be selected based on the summaries and the INFORMS/CPMS verification process.

Friday, February 10, 2017 Deadline for finalists to provide a full written paper.

Monday, April 3, 2017 Each finalist group will give an oral presentation of their work in a special session at the INFORMS Conference on O.R. Practice Business Analytics & O.R.in Las Vegas, NV, April 2−4, 2017.

Mendsaikhan Sonomtseren has served as the chairman of the National Registration and Statistics Office of Mongolia (NRSO) since 2009. Prior to joining the NRSO, he held other high-ranking positions with the government of Mongolia including advisor to the Speaker of Parliament, Minister of Nature and Environment, and vice minister of Fuel and Energy. Altantsetseg Sodnomtseren is a consultant and manager of international programs and projects with more than 15 years of experience as a manager, policy analyst and researcher in strategic management, business development, institutional assessment and higher education. She has worked for the NRSO, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme and the Asia Research Center, and she was an International Policy Fellow at the Open Society Foundations. Khuslen Zorigt has served as senior officer of the Foreign Relations Division at NRSO since 2008. She has also served as an officer of the Foreign Relations Departments for the NRSO and the Office of the Mayor of Ulaanbaatar.

REFERENCE 1. http://unicefmongolia.blogspot.com/2014/09/writing-bright-future-literacy-rates-in.html

ABOUT THE COMPETITION

The purpose of the competition is to bring forward, recognize, and reward outstanding examples of operations research, the management sciences, and advanced analytics in practice. The client organization that uses the winning work receives a prize citation; the authors of the winning work receive a cash award.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS

Visit the website www.informs.org/edelmanaward for detailed information. Entries should report on a completed practical application and must describe results that had a significant, verifiable, and preferably quantifiable impact on the performance of the client organization. Finalist work will be published in the January-February 2018 issue of Interfaces. Any work you have done in recent years is eligible, unless it has previously been described by a Franz Edelman Award finalist. Previous publications of the work does not disqualify it. Anyone is eligible for the competition except a member of the judging panel.

EMAIL SUBMISSIONS

Please email your submission to Anne.Robinson@VerizonWireless.com Anne G. Robinson, 2017 Edelman Award Competition Chair The Pr

CPMS

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INNOVATIVE EDUCATION

Study examines European OR/MS education

T Preliminary insight reveals and addresses misalignment of student education with labor market demand. By Jeroen Beliën, Hans Ittmann, Marco Laumanns, João Luís de Miranda, Margarida Pato and Ana Paula Teixeira 48 | ORMS Today

August 2016

he Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO) sponsored a survey [1] of European universities and other higher education institutions (HEI) related to the first phase of the European Study on OR/MS Education. The purpose of the study, held from June to October 2015, was to obtain detailed insight into the current state of O.R education in Europe. It should be noted that EURO currently includes 31 member countries, including the non-European countries of Israel, South Africa a nd Tunis ia . A few of the sur vey r e s ponde nt s identified their affiliation with European countries that are not represented in EURO (e.g., Ukraine), or stated that they are visiting fellows from abroad (e.g., India); in this regard the terms Europe and European, as used in this article, shall include these respondents.

ormstoday.informs.org

In keeping with the theme, the survey presents an overview of the most important aspects of OR/ MS education at the European level and was: • directed at HEI boards, deans and school directors; OR/MS program coordinators; OR/ MS professors, researchers and other OR/MS professionals; and • aimed at raising awareness for relevant, selected factors in OR/MS education with a specific focus on the following sets of topics: enrollment of students, particularly first-tier students; restructuring procedures; teaching practices; the labor market. In addition, the survey was designed to canvas the active collaboration of EURO and OR/MS national societies and HEI by utilizing the various society newsletters, mailing lists, websites, etc. Based on the survey results, a general and shared view of the current status of OR/MS education in European countries is being developed.Therefore, what is presented here are only preliminary insights and results related to the labor market within the OR/MS field. Related literature and additional information can be found in the most recent newsletter of the Croatian Operational Research Society (CRORS), where the survey’s first results and prospects were published, or in the survey on O.R. practice of Ranyard, et al. [3]. About the Survey As noted, the primary focus of the survey was to get an appreciation and a general sense or understanding of the status of OR/MS education in Europe. Secondly, in cases where there were sufficient participants, a country-specific analysis is possible using the survey results. For countries where there are just too few participants or no participants, a suggestion would be to do a “separate country” analysis. This can be achieved by a separate survey or an analysis of the way the different universities in the country present, offer, handle, etc., OR/MS education in that country.The results, which could be either quantitative or qualitative, can then be used to do an analysis, or comparison, with the results obtained from the entire survey. The respondents were not obliged to disclose their identity; however, there was an option for those who wanted to provide additional details. To encourage this, a proposal was made to distribute 60 electronic copies of the first book from the EURO Advanced Tutorials series on “Operational Research” (Mansini et al., 2015) among the self-identified respondents. Finally, assuming promotion of HEI synergies with labor market institutions and organizations,

Figure 1: Identified respondents.

Based on the

the survey section focusing on the labor market included both general and OR/MS based topics. The survey dissemination had good support from OR/MS communities, drawing a total of 191 respondents. Of these, about 31 percent were partially identified, as shown in Figure 1, with regards to their country of origin and where their institutions are located. The country information was crucial to promote comparison between countries, and special emphasis was placed on communicating this issue. In spite of this effort, about 9 percent of respondents preferred to provide only their teaching field, while the other 60 percent did not present any personal information at all. About 40 percent of respondents (76 out of 191) identified their specific field of teaching (Figure 2). Economic/management represents the largest identified field of teaching, followed by mathematics and computer sciences.These three fields of teaching account for about 80 percent of the identified respondents, while the total of respondents from

survey results, a shared view of the status of

OR/MS education in European countries is

being developed.

Figure 2: Fields of teaching indicated by respondents. August 2016

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Survey: EUROPEAN O.R. EDUCATION

engineering, exact/pure sciences and other fields of teaching account for the remainder of the total. Survey Results & Employment The labor market (section E of the survey) is dedicated to the HEI relationships with labor market institutions and organizations. The aspects surveyed cover important considerations related to curricula content, to HEI boards and decision-makers. Indeed, employability concerns and graduate transitions into the labor market are important factors for both program accreditation and students enrolment. These types of concerns seem to be supported by the results presented in Figure 3. When asked to evaluate how their HEI are promoting the transition of graduates into the labor market (for example, by

Figure 3: Promotion of graduates’ transition into the labor market.

Figure 4: Specific promotion of entrance into the labor market in the OR/MS field.

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August 2016

providing a website, a support office, business materials, professional computer/facilities, professional software, dedicated activities/events and consultation with employers/organizations when designing new programs), on average, about 62 percent of the respondents evaluate their HEI efforts favorably. Consider the following comments and results based on survey questions: • • When asked to comment on the following statement, “In my HEI, there is a dedicated interlocutor to establish and supervise contacts with labor market organizations,” about 51 percent responded positively (excellent – 12 percent; good – 24 percent; satisfactory – 15 percent), while about 20 percent of respondents indicated that they lack sufficient information to respond. Only 29 percent answered “fair” or “poor.” • • Similarly, when asked about the following statement, “In my HEI there is assessment of activities related to the labor market,” about 55 percent agreed to some extent (excellent, 9 percent; good – 22 percent; satisfactory – 24 percent), while about 31 percent of respondents evaluated this statement negatively and 14 percent indicated that they lack sufficient information. On the other hand, it is interesting to note that the trend changes when OR/MS is evaluated, specifically with respect to the OR/MS field itself. As Figure 4 and Figure 5 indicate, the related topics are negatively evaluated by the majority of the respondents. The more detailed statement, “My HEI specifically promotes entry into the labor market in the OR/MS field” received only about 33 percent positive appreciation (excellent – 5 percent; good – 11 percent; satisfactory – 17 percent), while about 31 percent of the respondents reacted negatively to this statement. In comparison with the general topic as depicted in Figure 3, where only 7 percent of the respondents lacked information, in Figure 4 about 24 percent of respondents indicated they lack information. Does this comparison suggest that about 17 percent of the respondents may consider that specific OR/MS activities for the labor market do not exist or, at least, are not disseminated? Similarly for the statement, “My HEI provides scientific and technical updates into organizations and institutions, particularly within the OR/MS field,” only about 42 percent of respondents agreed to some extent (excellent – 4 percent; good – 22 ormstoday.informs.org

percent; satisfactory – 16 percent), while 31 percent of respondents reacted somewhat negatively. Figure 5 indicates that 27 percent of respondents lacked sufficient information. The same remark and conclusion can be drawn in comparing the percentage of respondents indicating lack of information for this specific topic to the general one in Figure 3. In addition, the question in the prior paragraph could be rephrased to: Is specific OR/MS updating being provided into labor market organizations and institutions at the same level and extent as other scientific/technical specialties? From the results it seems that the promotion of specific OR/MS activities and the corresponding general activities are not uniform. An immediate suggested action could be to map any existing barriers for specific OR/MS activities and re-assess the most important drivers in the labor market, and then better promote the usefulness of OR/MS activities to improve their alignment with the general activities of HEIs in relation to the labor market. Concluding Remarks and Prospects Possible European-level actions to support OR/MS education include coordination of efforts in different countries and avoiding replication and improving resources utilization, especially in the case of HEIs that are under severe financial constraints. Enhancing relationships with labor market organizations and institutions will improve graduates employment opportunities, by aligning the OR/MS education content and teaching practices to the labor market needs. This will also foster students’ enrollment by communicating such specific attributes. Other options include promotion of OR/MS activities to HEI directors and decision-makers within engineering and exact/pure sciences programs in order to promote the OR/MS relevance. Furthermore, by looking beyond labor market concerns, through these actions the awareness of the importance of OR/MS for students’ enrollment, the success of first-year students, restructuring procedures and teaching practices shall also be properly addressed. The study provides useful insight in the way HEIs from different European countries address and describe OR/MS education.The variances between country-specific education and the European situation may lead to more detailed studies. For example, it will be possible to confirm and/or to explain the survey results by interviewing identified respondents. Presenting the survey results at congresses and

Figure 5: Providing scientific/technical updates into organizations/institutions within the OR/MS field.

conferences can spur further discussions about enhancing OR/MS education and OR/MS prospects. This article only presented preliminary results; further analysis will clarify the key- and sub-factors impacting OR/MS education that will hopefully direct subsequent study phases. Those colleagues (a contact list is available at https://ec.europa.eu/ eusurvey/runner/ORMSeducation) who were involved in disseminating the survey results at a EURO level are encouraged to pursue the study. The study approach and the interest shown by many academics may enable extending it to other IFORS regional groupings. ORMS

An immediate

suggested action could be to map

any existing barriers for specific

Jeroen Beliën is an associate professor, faculty of economic and business, University of Leuven, Belgium. Hans Ittmann is a research associate with the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Marco Laumanns is a research staff member of the Business Optimization Group in the Mathematical and Computational Sciences Department of the IBM Zurich Research Lab. João Luís de Miranda is an adjunct professor, School of Management and Technology, Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre, Portugal. Margarida Pato is a faculty member of the Center for Mathematics, Fundamental Applications and the Operations Research School of Economics and Management at the University of Lisbon, Portugal. Ana Paula Teixeira is faculty member of the Department of Mathematics, University of Trás-osMontes and Alto Douro, Portugal.

OR/MS activities.

REFERENCES 1. Belien, J., Ittmann, H.W., Laumanns, M., Miranda, J.L. Pato, M.V., Teixeira, A.P., “European Study on OR/MS Education: first results and prospects,” CRORS News Magazine (CRORS, Croatia, April-2016). ISSN: 1849-2762 http://hdoi.hr/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/CRORSNews-Volume-3-Number-1-April-2016.pdf 2. Mansini, R., Ogryczak, W., Speranza, G., 2015, “Linear and Mixed Integer Programming for Portfolio Optimization, Springer Series “EURO Advanced Tutorials on Operational Research” (eBook). 3. Ranyard, J., Hoffman, K., Rosario, E., Dunstall, S., Ittmann, H.W., 2011, “O.R. Practice Stream,” IFORS Conference, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

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IMP

OR NO TAN T TIC Pr e E s ent reg :

ist ers mu to er by rem Sep st a t. 1 sch in on th 6 edu in t e l e he pro & gra m.

Nashville 2016

2016 INFORMS ANNUAL MEETING November 13-16 | Nashville, Tennessee Plenary Speakers: Dr. Guru Banavar, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, IBM Panel: John Birge, John Little, Ralph Keeney, Alfred Blumstein & Graham Rand, Omega Rho Suvrajeet Sen & Gareth James, University of Southern California

Keynotes: Jeff Nichols, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Rolf H. Mohring, Beijing Institute for ScientiďŹ c & Engineering Computing Jason Murray, Amazon Edmund Jackson, Hospital Corporation of America

Important Dates: September 1 - Poster Submission Deadline

SEPTEMBER 16 - ALL PRESENTERS MUST REGISTER October 16 - Early Registration Deadline

http://meetings.informs.org/nashville2016

ormstoday.informs.org

news Record turnout expected for INFORMS Annual Meeting

Nashville skyline: The “Music City” will host the 2016 INFORMS Annual Meeting on Nov. 13-16. Images courtesy of Nashville Convention & Visitors Corporation.

By Chanaka Edirisinghe The 2016 INFORMS Annual Meeting is shaping up to be one of the largest conferences ever held in Nashville, Tenn. Hosted at the Music City Center and the adjacent Omni Hotel, the conference will include 1,351 sessions, with each 90-minute session featuring four talks for a total of more than 5,000 presentations spread over 74 rooms. If the latest advances in operations research, management sciences and analytics along with the sheer volume of presentations don’t take your breath away, add to that the sizzling combination of American music,

Southern hospitality, unbelievable cuisine and a boundless spectrum of enjoyment that the host city has to offer. You do not want to be anywhere else on this planet during Nov. 13-16. The technical program is designed with an exciting array of academic and practitioner invited presentations highlighting several grand challenges facing the world: • Advanced computing as the driver of technological transformation of our society. Topic-related presentations include an opening plenary lecture on

Inside News 56-57 President-elect statements 58

In Memoriam: Howard Raiffa

In Memoriam: Salah Eldin Elmaghraby

People

Winter Simulation Conference

Meetings

cognitive computing by Guruduth Banavar, VP and chief science officer at IBM; a keynote lecture by Jeff Nichols, director (NCCS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and an invited cluster on High Performance Computing organized by Deepak Rajan of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. • Precision agriculture that aims to leverage predictive analytics using real-time data to meet the challenges in increasing the global food production in the face of rising population. Topic-related presentations include an invited cluster organized by Robin Lougee of IBM and Joseph Byrum of Syngenta to bring OR/MS to the forefront of this challenge. • National healthcare issues from both policy-making and informatics perspectives. Topic-related presentations include a keynote lecture by Edmund Jackson, chief data scientist and VP of Healthcare Corporation of America; and an invited cluster on O.R.-informed Healthcare Policies, organized by Diwakar Gupta, University of Minnesota. Join a 90min session organized by Sanjay Mehrotra (Northwestern University) that brings together operations research leaders with those from the organ transplant community to learn the complexities and process of influencing model-based policy changes to impact disparity metrics, lives saved, and pre- as well as post-transplant costs. • Exploration of big data and big decisions facing OR/MS researchers and practitioners. Topic-related presentations include a joint plenary lecture by Suvrajeet Sen and Gareth James, University of Southern California; and an invited cluster on Modeling and Methodologies in Big Data, organized by Jiming Peng, University of Houston. Annual Meeting, continued on p. 54

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n ews Annual Meeting, continued from p. 53

• Challenges in identifying and mitigating risk in the financial industry under changing regulations, emerging technologies and heightened corporate responsibility. Topic-related presentations include an invited cluster on Risk and Compliance organized by Akhtarur Siddique, deputy director (Enterprise Risk and Analysis), Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, U.S. Dept. of the Treasury. • The future of global supply chains and the issue of optimizing their efficiencies. Topic-related presentations include a keynote lecture by Jason Murray, VP of World Wide Retail Systems, Amazon; and the IFORS distinguished keynote lecture on hard practical optimization problems that deal with routing bidirectional traffic by Ralph Möhring, Berlin University of Technology.

But Wait, There’s More The conference will offer a unique opportunity to celebrate the Omega-Rho 40th Year Anniversary through a plenary lecture given by an expert panel consisting of Alfred Blumstein (CMU), John Birge (Chicago), Ralph Keeney (Duke) and John Little (MIT). In addition, several new invited clusters are featured, including business model innovation, energy systems management, social media and entertainment analytics. Throughout the conference, a group of nine academic and six practitioner speakers will give a series of 90-minute tutorial lectures that will be collected as a written volume. The tutorials, a must-make for beginning and advanced researchers alike, will cover the following high-impact research themes: • Optimization frontiers: reviews of stochastic optimization as the science of sequential decision-making under uncertainty, with applications to asset-liability management and Markov decision processes; optimal learning when information is expensive; robust multi-objective optimization theory and applications in engineering, business and management. • Network modeling: systemic risk due to complex dependence structure of interactions among individual components, including banks, financial services providers and regulators – with tutorials in network sampling, resilience under contagion and analysis under behavior of multiple autonomous agents for online social networks 54 | ORMS Today

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and economic and financial markets. • Risk modeling and decisions: review of mathematical finance with emphasis on the need to avoid and rescind destructive deployment of financial risk models; dealing with unstructured data from corporate filings, expert reports and news headlines for financial text mining for risk factors; valuation and hedging of risk in energy portfolios. • Big data: reviews of dimension reduction techniques, as well as data access methods for efficient analytics. • Healthcare and big projects: review of clinical and health sciences research, rooted in empirical evidence, and the role of analytics in addressing health risks of populations; and an expanded review of research and teaching opportunities in project management, a global economic activity valued at $12 trillion annually. The conference will include many clusters and tracks organized by the sponsored societies within INFORMS, as well as more than a thousand contributed presentations. The INFORMS Roundtable, Analytics Society, CPMS, R ailway Applications Section and other practicerelated INFORMS societies will collaborate on a special practice track. Moreover, the presentations of the finalists for the Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice will serve as a Tuesday afternoon keynote. Last but not least, poster sessions will run on Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 1415, from 12:30-2:30 p.m. This year we are ramping up interactive sessions with the introduction of the E-Poster Walk – an electronic poster displayed digitally instead of printed on paper as a traditional poster. All poster competition semifinalists will have the option of presenting an electronic version of their final poster to be digitally displayed during the E-Poster Walk Session. A panel of OR/MS leaders, serving as judges, will review the posters entered in the competition, and winners will receive a certificate and be recognized in the INFORMS newsletters and on the INFORMS website, and receive cash awards. All speakers of invited, sponsored and contributed presentations, as well as poster

presentations, must complete paid registration by Sept. 16 or risk the presentation being eliminated from the program.

Something for Everyone I would be remiss not to mention that Nashville offers everything from an electrifying multi-genre music scene, award-winning cuisine, historic homes, world-class art, a myriad of attractions, unique shopping, college and professional sports and more. There are more than 120 live music venues across the city; you’ll catch pickers and songwriters all over town, in places such as the bluegrass venue Station Inn, the rock venue Exit/ In, the honky-tonks on Broadway Street, the song-centered Bluebird Cafe or the legendary Ryman Auditorium. Nashville is also home to many attractions, from the Grand Ole Opry to the world-renowned Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Opened in May 2013, the Johnny Cash Museum and the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum add to the lineup. Nashville is also rich in visual and fine arts. The Frist Center for the Visual Arts is housed in an exquisitely converted Art Deco post office, the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art houses an extensive art gallery, and art crawls, studios and art galleries are all around town. I am grateful to the organizing committee members who have steadfastly volunteered to put together a well-orchestrated and comprehensive program for 2016. They are Shabbir Ahmed (invited), James Primbs (plenaries), Aparna Gupta and Agostino Capponi (tutorials), Melissa Bowers and Oleg Shylo (posters), Mingzhou Jin and Sean Willems (practice), James Ostrowski (sponsored), Scott Mason and Justin Yates (contributed), Christine Vossler and Anahita Khojandi (arrangements) and the program chair, Bogdan Bichescu. My special appreciation goes to the highly professional and efficient INFORMS staff members, who are always there to help and guide the organizing committee. I look forward to seeing you in Nashville. ORMS Chanaka Edirisinghe, professor, Lally School of Management, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is the general chair of the 2016 INFORMS Annual Meeting in Nashville, Tenn.

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What’s Your StORy? Pooyan Kazemian Research fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital INFORMS member since 2011 What prompted you to enter this field? Why? I didn’t fully realize the potential impact that operations research methods can have to improve quality of care and patient satisfaction until I experienced hospitals as a patient when I was a graduate student. Enduring long waiting times in hospitals, poor continuity of care, and poorly designed processes was an epiphany that changed my whole view of the potential of operations research in healthcare systems. Furthermore, being selected as the recipient of the Bonder Scholarship for Applied Operations Research in Health Services by INFORMS made me even more determined to pursue a career in healthcare after graduating from the Industrial and Operations Engineering Department at the University of Michigan. You seem to be a member of several INFORMS communities, can you speak to which one(s) you are most heavily involved in and how? Has being a member of an INFORMS community enhanced your career path? I’ve been more active in the Health Applications Society (HAS). I have chaired invited sessions in the HAS cluster of the 2014 and 2015 INFORMS Annual Meetings in San Francisco and Philadelphia, respectively, and also in the 2015 INFORMS Healthcare Conference in Nashville. I’ll be organizing another invited session at the upcoming INFORMS Annual Meeting in Nashville. I found my current job through the INFORMS Career Center website and highly recommend checking that out to every operations researcher in the job market. What advice do you have for new students entering this field? Always try to find research problems that have high impact on people’s lives and make the world a better place to live. For instance, in my field (i.e., healthcare O.R.) it is extremely important to engage medical collaborators from healthcare organizations to identify real-world problems, obtain relevant datasets, and ensure practical significance. Also, it is critical to translate operations research methods into practical decision support tools and managerial insights and make them understandable and available to a broad audience including engineers, medical doctors, and managers.

More questions for Pooyan? Ask him in the Open Forum on INFORMS Connect!

http://connect.informs.org

n ews Position statement:

Nicholas G. Hall “Our vision is to sustain INFORMS’ intellectual leadership in the analytics/operations research/management science field, while increasing our impact.”

It would be an honor to serve as president of INFORMS. The future of INFORMS is bright, with record membership, a strong financial position and exciting new opportunities in both academia and practice. Serving as president would be especially meaningful because of my seven previous years on the Board. As vice president for Membership and Professional Recognition, I refined the nomination and awards processes used by INFORMS’ awards committees. As treasurer, I improved the budget calendar and process and developed improved performance measures. I reported operating surpluses amounting to approximately $1.8 million and an 80 percent increase in reserve funds. This money supports INFORMS’ activities, including analytics certification. Our vision is to sustain INFORMS’ intellectual leadership in the analytics/operations research/ management science field, while increasing our impact. We are the only professional society with five Financial Times journals. The applied work of INFORMS members provides remarkable, although sometimes underappreciated, value. Given INFORMS’ strategic plan from the January 2016 Board meeting, I suggest the following directions for further growth and improvement: Ensure continuing financial stability. Continuing financial stability is a prerequisite for fulfillment of INFORMS’ new strategic plan. Despite the benefits of analytics, INFORMS’ revenue streams remain poorly diversified, and increasing revenue through further growth in the annual meeting is logistically challenging. At a strategic level, this issue needs to be addressed by extending INFORMS’ leadership and visibility with respect to nationally important issues, for example healthcare, energy policy and sustainability. We need further diversification of INFORMS’ revenue, especially in the areas of continuing education, conference workshops and certification. The financial controls that I introduced as treasurer need to be strengthened, and frequent benchmarking of the performance of our investment advisors is needed. Improve membership value and member retention. The first goal of INFORMS’ strategic plan is identifying, recognizing and promoting the work of members. Many new and recently

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joined members fail to renew their memberships. We need to enhance membership benefits for all members. I will develop a system that mentors new and recently joined members into continuing their membership. This will include a “new member toolkit” that helps new members understand and enjoy the wide array of opportunities and resources that INFORMS membership conveys. I will simplify and obtain sponsorship for the “Coffee with a Member” program for first-time conference attendees to enable many more conference attendees to participate. Funding has been approved for website redesign with analytic tracking, and the implementation needs to be state of the art and include an upgrade of the membership directory. Improve public funding for INFORMS activities. Our activities remain significantly underfunded relative to the societal value we deliver. We need to develop more effective mechanisms for explaining our case. This process starts with improved visibility and a clearer message about the societal value we deliver through OR/ MS and analytics. To deliver this message, I will work with INFORMS staff to develop focused policy conferences in Washington, D.C., with government and science policy-makers, to highlight the value we deliver on key national issues – for example, healthcare, energy policy and military logistics. This will support the second and third goals of INFORMS’ strategic plan, by promoting the value of our contributions to decision-makers and organizations. Exploit opportunities from demographic and scientific changes. Predictable demographic and scientific changes include: • increasing internationalization of our membership, • a larger percentage of members from outside academia, • closer integration between academic disciplines and departments, • increasing consulting opportunities among the mainstream providers, and • faster turnover of topical areas within our field. We need to identify the special needs of our international members. Our conference cluster

structure needs to facilitate cross-disciplinary topics. I will encourage the development of a conference colloquium specifically for aspiring consultant members. The Publications Department needs to identify newly emerging topic areas. The Board needs to expedite the approval process for new journals. Improve information about INFORMS activities. Increasing the involvement and participation of members in its activities is an important long-term goal of INFORMS. Yet, changes in strategic direction, operational updates and new opportunities are not systematically shared with members. I will develop a system for reporting a summary of each Board meeting to the membership, with a view to encouraging feedback and participation from members. This summary could be published in either OR/MS Today or INFORMS eNews. We are all very fortunate to be involved in this great activity that frequently challenges, occasionally frustrates, and continually fascinates us. As president, I will work towards growth in visibility, funding, membership and impact. ORMS Nicholas G. Hall is a professor of Management Sciences and Integrated Systems Engineering at The Ohio State University. He holds a Ph.D. (Management Science, University of California, Berkeley, 1986) and a B.A. and M.A. (Economics, University of Cambridge). His research and teaching interests include project management, scheduling and pricing. He has published 82 articles in such journals as Operations Research, Management Science, Mathematics of Operations Research, Mathematical Programming, Games and Economic Behavior and Interfaces. He has served as associate editor of Operations Research (1991-) and Management Science (1993-2008). His 335 presentations include 11 keynote addresses, eight INFORMS tutorials and 98 invited talks in 23 countries. A 2008 citation study ranked him 13th among 1,376 operations management scholars. He won the Fisher College Faculty Research Award (1998, 2005). He served as president of MSOM (1999-2000), treasurer of INFORMS (2011-2014) and on the Ohio Steel Industry Advisory Council (1997-2002).

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Position statement:

Robin Lougee “INFORMS needs to aggressively capitalize on the game-changing momentum in analytics. As president, I will advance current efforts and pilot new initiatives to bring value to our members and profession.”

I am deeply honored to be nominated for the position of INFORMS president. Along with many of you, I share a passionate enthusiasm for operations research. INFORMS is my professional home. I joined as a graduate student. For more than 20 years I have worked alongside the many talented teams of volunteers and staff who make a difference. My experience spans the spectrum from serving on the Board, to leading subdivisions, to chairing prizes, to organizing meetings, to participating on editorial boards, to creating new value like the COIN-OR opensource initiative. The caliber and diversity of talent at INFORMS makes service its own reward for me, and I am grateful to be considered for this leadership opportunity. It is an auspicious time for our community. INFORMS is arguably in the healthiest position in its history. US News & World Report ranks “operations research analyst” as No. 2 in “Best Business Jobs” and No. 18 in the “100 Best Jobs” based on a composite score that includes current and projected conditions – a move up over last year in both categories. Our skills are in demand as evidenced by the number of open job postings and underscored by the growth in the number of master’s degree programs in analytics and data science. Our membership is at a record high. Journal submissions continue to grow. Attendance at the last annual meeting was almost another record breaker. And our financial position is strong. From my perspective as a research scientist at IBM Research, the opportunities for our profession have never been more promising. A confluence of technology trends in cloud, mobile and social are changing businesses and the world around us in new ways. For example, in 2015 the world’s largest taxi company, Uber, owned no vehicles (nor did the world’s more valuable retailer, Alibaba, own inventory, or the world’s largest accommodation provider, Airbnb, own real estate). Data is considered the new “natural” resource. The number of organizations looking to

leverage data is creating unprecedented interest in the talent, tools and theory found in our community. The INFORMS leadership has acted wisely to position INFORMS to catch the current wave of interest in analytics. Thanks to their foresight, INFORMS has made significant strategic moves to widen the aperture in how we think about ourselves and what we offer the world, such as re-branding of the spring conference and launching Analytics magazine to name just a few of the many changes. INFORMS needs to aggressively capitalize on the game-changing momentum in analytics. New initiatives are under way, including journals, educational offerings and conferences. As president, I will work with the dedicated INFORMS staff, led by Melissa Moore, and the volunteers on the Board and membership to advance the efforts that have begun and pilot new initiatives that will bring value to our members and profession. Three passions that I bring to the role are practice, students and outreach: 1. INFORMS needs to be relentless in reaching out across the spectrum of professionals involved in analytics – from invention to investment – in celebrating our profession and its impact. 2. INFORMS publications are outstanding. INFORMS should also support access to operations research software repositories, data sets, benchmarks and standards. These digital assets are building blocks to accelerating science within our own community and conduits by which researchers and developers in other communities can know and engage with us. 3. Students in our classes today are the future creators, consumers and advocates of analytics tomorrow. Student programs that provide a positive connection with INFORMS and build social networks with members are investments in our future. Many subdivisions offer highly regarded best student paper awards. INFORMS should also support

student competitions involving data and analysis that could appeal to a broad range of students. There is no limit to the creativity of INFORMS members. I am inspired by the world-class achievements of our community and look forward to the new era that is unfolding. With your support, I will help INFORMS make the most of the exciting opportunities ahead of us. ORMS Robin Lougee is the Global Research Industry Lead for Consumer Products & Agriculture at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. As an active INFORMS member for more than 20 years, she has served in leadership roles including vice president of Meetings on the INFORMS Board, past chair of the INFORMS Computing Society and chair of the INFORMS UPS George D. Smith Prize. She co-pioneered the creation of COIN-OR, an open-source foundry for computational operations research, and she led its growth to an independent non-profit that has served the scientific and business community for more than 10 years. She is the founding chair of the INFORMS Professional Colloquium, which has mentored students aspiring to careers in industry for more than a decade. She accepted the INFORMS Impact Prize on behalf of the COIN-OR community in 2014. She earned her Ph.D. in mathematical sciences from Clemson University in 1993.

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n ews In Memoriam

Howard Raiffa

(Jan. 24, 1924-July 8, 2016)

Harvard professor a ‘giant’ of decision analysis By Peter Horner Howard Raiffa, a longtime professor at Harvard University whose research and publications in decision analysis, decision-making and other related fields went to the heart and soul of operations research, passed away July 8 at his home in Arizona. He was 92. Professor Raiffa joined the Harvard faculty in 1957, and a decade later, he and a cohort of colleagues founded the modern Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government. He was the Frank P. Ramsey Professor Emeritus of Managerial Economics (a joint chair by the Business School and the Kennedy School) at the time of his death. “Howard was a giant in the history of the Kennedy School and a towering figure in the fields of decision analysis, negotiation analysis and game theory,” School Dean Douglas Elmendort said in a HKS release. “All of us who are associated with the Kennedy School are greatly in his debt.” Added Harvard professor, colleague and friend Richard Zeckhauser: “Along with a handful of other brilliant and dedicated people, Howard figured out what a school of public policy and administration should be in the latter decades of the 20th century, and then he and they created that school. The work of that founding group is evident today in so many aspects of what we do and how we do it. ... Howard recognized that the methods of which he was a master and that he pioneered could be helpful tools for individuals at all levels of sophistication. He knew that it was important to speak to the world.”

INFORMS Honors INFORMS and its societies honored Professor Raiffa multiple times during his extensive and distinguished career, including awarding him the Lanchester Prize (1976), Ramsey Medal (1984), Decision Analysis Publication Award (2001) and Saul Gass Expository Writing Award (2002). “Howard Raiffa had a profound influence on all aspects of the decision sciences and on the fields of operations research and systems 58 | ORMS Today

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analysis,” says Ralph Keeney, research professor emeritus at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. “He wrote remarkable books on game theory, Bayesian decision theory, decision analysis, dealing with multiple objectives, and on negotiation analysis. He guided the introduction of the decision sciences into numerous fields such as business, medicine, public health and law.” Raiffa and Keeney co-authored the book, “Decisions with Multiple Objectives,” which won the Lanchester Prize, as well as the book, “Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions” (with John S. Hammond), which won the Decision Analysis Publication Award from the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS. “Even with his remarkable academic accomplishments, Howard’s greatest interest was in individual people and our world,” Keeney says of his longtime friend, colleague and collaborator. “He was always focused on improving the world that we live in and our lives. He recognized that by helping individuals and organizations make better decisions and groups make better negotiated choices, this would make a positive difference. His ideas and work provided practical methods and procedures to indicate how better choices could be made. His kindness, generosity and warmth inspired others to do their best and take a broad perspective, including a consideration of the impacts on others in decisions and negotiations.” Keeney notes that Professor Raiffa had approximately 100 doctoral students and “helped thousands of students through his dedicated teaching and guidance,” a thought seconded by Ron Howard, a founder, with Howard Raiffa, of the field of decision analysis. “A great teacher has passed. It is said that a teacher is known by his students, and so will be Howard [Raiffa],” says Ron Howard, professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University and director of the university’s Decisions and Ethics Center. “I

Photo courtesy of Harvard Kennedy School.

met him when he gave talks at the Operations Research Group of Arthur D. Little, where I worked during my doctoral study at MIT, guided by Philip Morse and George Kimball. When I had just become an assistant professor at MIT, Howard invited me to teach in his Institute of Basic Mathematics for Application to Business, a yearlong Ford Foundation project he designed to introduce business school faculty to mathematics. Many of the participants became deans of business schools. I was honored by his confidence in me. “After I joined Stanford I enjoyed a sabbatical in his group at Harvard and met many of his colleagues. He was always gracious, congenial and patient in his teaching and personal relationships. The only way we can fully honor our teachers is to ‘pay it forward.’ ”

Born in the Bronx According to The New York Times, Howard Raiffa was born in the Bronx, N.Y., on Jan. 24, 1924, and graduated from Evander Childs High School, where he was captain of the basketball team. “Math was his best subject, but he dreamed of being a basketball player,” the Times notes. After briefly studying at the City College of New York and a stint in the Army Corp, Raiffa went to the University of Michigan where he earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics (1946), a master’s degree in statistics (1947) and a Ph.D. in mathematics (1952). He taught at Columbia University from 1952 to 1957, when he joined the faculty at Harvard. Shortly after moving to Harvard, Professor Raiffa published books on statistical decision theory with Robert Schlaifer and John Pratt that, according to a short biography on the INFORMS website, set out to prove (in Raiffa’s words) “that whatever the ormstoday.informs.org

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objectivists could do, we subjectivists could also do – only better.” The result was a paper that ultimately resulted in Raiff’s 1968 landmark book, “Decision Analysis,” the first book to widely present the subject’s foundation.

INFORMS Presidential Thoughts Current INFORMS President Ed Kaplan and former INFORMS President Robin Keller both met Professor Raiffa many years ago as students, and both were asked to share their remembrances of an extraordinary researcher, teacher and mentor. “I first encountered Howard Raiffa while a master’s student in O.R. at MIT when I opted to fulfill the decision analysis requirement by taking his course at Harvard, co-taught with David Bell,” recalls Kaplan, a professor of operations research, public health and engineering at Yale University’s schools of Management, Public Health, and Engineering and Applied Science, respectively. “Needless to say, his legendary command of the material was confirmed by his excellent teaching and patient, deep explanations of the concepts he had such a large part in developing in books like ‘Decision Analysis’ and ‘Decisions with Multiple Objectives.’ I later discovered his (much) earlier text, ‘Applied Statistical Decision Theory (co-authored with Robert Schlaifer),’ a book affectionately referred to as the ‘blue monster’ at the MIT OR Center, while working on a Bayesian mixture problem. “So it was with both trepidation and delight when, in my first academic job post Ph.D., I was assigned to co-teach a course

with him on methods of decision-making at Harvard’s Kennedy School in 1985. For a few short months, I had the learning experience of a lifetime. Howard was perhaps the most prepared lecturer I have ever met. For each session, he had at his disposal binders full of problems, mostly of his own design and often reflecting his own real-world experiences, from which he would select those most appropriate for the course as it was evolving. “His was a towering presence at the Kennedy School, even though most of his time at Harvard had been spent at that business school across the river. Howard provided very helpful feedback to this green rookie, stressing the importance of properly sizing up and understanding a situation before rushing off to build a model. Howard was a gifted mathematician, but in his work it was his ability to structure decision situations – what are the objectives, preferences and options faced by decision-makers along with the role of chance – that stands out. More than this, I remember a kind and supportive scholar who was so influential when I was just getting started. “Though our paths crossed infrequently after I left Harvard, all of our subsequent correspondence and meetings were cheerful and upbeat. My sympathies to his family, friends and colleagues as we mark the passing of a great man.” Adds Keller: “As an undergraduate, I became fascinated with decision analysis while reading Luce and Raiffa’s ‘Games and Decisions’ text. As a doctoral student, Keeney and Raiffa’s 1976 book on multiple objective decision models was our ‘bible.’ As a professor, it was my pleasure to visit Howard and Estelle Raiffa at their home

Salah Eldin Elmaghraby

and share a ride to the National Academy of Sciences in Woodshole, Mass., for a meeting of the National Member Organization of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). Dr. Raiffa was the first director of IIASA, and it was great to hear their stories of the early days of the institute in the Cold War era, as scientists from the USSR and other countries met on neutral ground at IIASA in Austria to work on societal system problems.”

Lasting Legacy Professor Raiffa is survived by his wife, Estelle (Schwartz) Raiffa, whom he married in 1945, along with his daughter, Judith, his son, Mark, and four grandchildren. The number of additional people Professor Raiffa has impacted is countless. “Personally, my life has been deeply and positively influenced by knowing Howard,” Keeney says. “Over 50 years he has held many roles in my life, including teacher, mentor, colleague, co-author and friend. For the last 25 years, with Estelle Raiffa, Howard’s wife, they have become part of my family and we have become a part of theirs. “At a large celebration of Howard’s retirement from Harvard in 1994, I had the privilege to offer a few remarks about his career and contributions,” Keeney continues. “I concluded with, ‘Howard, you did not leave room to exaggerate so I will grossly understate. You are simply the best.’ Anyone who knew Howard well would agree.” ORMS Peter Horner is the editor of OR/MS Today, as well as Analytics magazine. Sources: Harvard Kennedy School, INFORMS, The New York Times

(Oct. 21, 1927-June 12, 2016)

NCSU professor, INFORMS fellow founded O.R. dept. Dr. Salah Eldin Elmaghraby, a longtime and influential member of the global operations research academic community and an INFORMS Fellow, passed away June 8 at his home in Raleigh, N.C., surrounded by family and caregivers. He was 88. A resident of Raleigh since 1967 when he was recruited to start up and head the

Operations Research department at North Carolina State University, he went on to become a chaired university professor at his beloved institution. Dr. Elmaghraby was born in Egypt and received his degree in mechanical engineering at Cairo University. Anyone who met him was immediately struck by his

inquisitive mind and strong aptitude for his studies. After graduation, he worked briefly in Cairo, accepted the prestigious post of teaching assistant at the faculty of Engineering at Cairo University, and then traveled to Europe in 1949 with the Egyptian Railroads Foreign Inspection office as their quality control inspector. Memoriam, continued on p. 60

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n ews Memoriam, continued from p. 59

While in Europe, witnessing the upheaval of the aftermath of WWII and Communism, Dr. Elmaghraby truly understood the value of education and the power of knowledge. This conclusion drew him to pursue graduate studies in the United Sates, where he first attended Ohio State University for his master’s degree and then continued to Cornell University’s Ph.D. program in mechanical engineering. Upon graduation, Dr. Elmaghraby served as a research leader at the Western Electric Engineering Research Center in Princeton, N.J., and as an associate professor at Yale University before joining North Carolina State in 1967. Over the course of his career, Dr. Elmaghraby traveled and lived around the world while enjoying visiting professorships at Cornell University Ithaca, N.Y.; the University of Alexandria in Egypt; the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia; the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium; University Lyon I, France; the Nagoya In-

stitute of Technology, Japan; and Tsinghua University in Beijing, PRC. In addition, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University Lyon I, France. Dr. Elmaghraby wrote four books, two of which were translated into Japanese and Romanian. He edited or co-edited three other books, including the “Handbook of Operations Research,” which was translated into Russian. In addition, he authored or co-authored eight book chapters, wrote 11 book reviews, and authored or co-authored more than118 scientific papers. In addition to being elected an INFORMS Fellow, he was a Fellow of IIE, a member of APICS and NSPE, and a registered PE. Dr. Elmaghraby was a pillar of every community he touched – his university, his professional societies and the Egyptian community in Raleigh he helped found and grow, and his family. He sincerely loved to connect with others, was excited by the prospect of learning new ideas from different cultures and disciplines, shared of

himself selflessly and worked tirelessly to accomplish any cause he deemed worthy. An avid reader, a passionate sailor and a lover and patron of the arts, Dr. Elmaghraby’s open-mindedness and appreciation of all subjects and jobs made him a true scholar and a wonderful father. Dr. Elmaghraby leaves a legacy of a thriving Operations Research department at NCSU and a legion of undergraduate, master’s and Ph.D. students around the world. Dr. Elmaghraby is survived by his wife, Amina, his two daughters, Wedad Jasmine and Karima Noor, his sisters Zeinab and Amina, and five grandchildren. Wedad Jasmine and her husband, Caglar Ozden, have three children, Nuray, Nedim and Leyla. Karima Noor and her husband, Ismail Radwan, have two sons, Zackaria and Zain. No one who met Dr. Elmaghraby did not know about his family and how important they were to him. Above all, his wife Amina was his constant partner in all of his endeavors. ORMS

People Sridhar Tayur, professor of management at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, a longtime member of INFORMS and an Sridhar Tayur INFORMS Fellow, participated in a recent organ summit in Washington, D.C. Hosted by the White House, the summit was organized to answer President Obama’s call to action to reduce the waiting list for organ transplants. The event highlighted the role of science, technology and innovation in organ donation and transplantation. Tayur has published many scholarly publications in journals, including Operations Research, Management Science, Mathematics of Operations Research, Transportation Science and Interfaces. He is co-editor of the widely referenced book, “Quantitative Models for Supply Chain Management,” and served on the editorial boards of 60 | ORMS Today

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Operations Research and Management Science. Tayur founded the software company SmartOps Corporation and served as its CEO for 12 years (since acquired by SAP). In addition, he has been recognized for his entrepreneurship through an Ernst & Young finalist award, as well as by the Carnegie Science Center Award for innovation in information technology. A. Ravi Ravindran, a world-renowned expert on operations research, is the editor of a new book that provides guidance for decision-makers in the A. Ravi Ravindran supply chain. “Multiple Criteria Decision Making in Supply Chain Management” (Operations Research Series), published by CRC Press, LLC, provides a comprehensive overview of multi-criteria optimization models and methods that can be used in supply chain decision-making.

The book features contributions from internationally known authors, researchers, educators and practitioners that address the complex issue of maximizing profit and customer responsiveness while minimizing supply chain risk. Ravindran, a professor in the Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Penn State University and a longtime member of INFORMS, has nearly 50 years of experience in academia – including nearly 30 years at Penn State – and seven books published on various operations researchrelated topics and methods. The focus of the book is on the design and operation of the supply chain system. This method involves connecting many production and distribution systems – often across wide geographic distances – in such a way that the businesses involved can ultimately satisfy the consumer demand as efficiently as possible. The result leads to maximum financial returns to all of the businesses involved in the supply chain.ORMS ormstoday.informs.org

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Meetings WSC 2016: Simulating Complex Service Systems By Todd R. Huschka The Winter Simulation Conference (WSC) has been the premier international forum for disseminating recent advances in the field of dynamic systems modeling and simulation for almost 50 years (2017 is the 50th anniversary!). In addition to a technical program of unsurpassed scope and quality, WSC is the central meeting place for simulation researchers, practitioners and vendors spanning all disciplines and working in industry, government, military, service and academic sectors. WSC 2016 will be held Dec. 11-14 in Arlington, Va., just outside Washington, D.C., at the Crystal Gateway Marriott. The theme for WSC 2016 is “Simulating Complex Service Systems.” The great aspect of simulation is the wide range of interests. Our academic tracks include analysis methodology, modeling methodology, simulation optimization, agent-based simulation and hybrid simulations. Our applied uses of simulation include social and behavioral simulation, defense and security, modeling and analysis of semiconductor manufacturing (MASM), healthcare application, logistics, manufacturing applications, networks and communications, project management and construction, environmental and sustainability applications, and general applications. Introductory and advanced tutorials, simulation education, case studies, Ph.D. colloquia, poster sessions and vendor tutorials will also be featured. Whatever your specialty, WSC will have something for you. In addition to the normal lineup of great tracks and speakers, WSC 2016 will have a special cross-fertilization track where we welcome three speakers from different disciplines who work in areas that use simulation modeling or analysis methods related to simulation as part of their work. This is a special track that runs on an exception basis. The theme, “Simulating Complex Service Systems,” is an area close to my personal background in healthcare. However, complex service systems are incorporated into almost every aspect of our lives, and as the world seems to move more and more toward service-based economic models, the use of simulation modeling has an opportunity to play a large role in the efficient development of these models. We have a great lineup of keynote speakers for WSC 2016. Our opening keynote is Scott E. Page, professor of complex systems at the University of Michigan and an external faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute. His talk “Many Model Thinking,” which will discuss

Go to www.informs.org/Conf for a searchable INFORMS Conference Calendar.

INFORMS Annual & International Meetings Nov. 13-16, 2016

Oct. 22-25, 2017

INFORMS Annual Meeting

Music City Center & Omni Nashville Nashville, Tenn. Chair: Chanaka Edirisinghe, RPI http://meetings.informs.org/nashville2016

George R. Brown Convention Center & Hilton Americas Houston, Texas Chair: William Klimack, Chevron

April 2-4, 2017

INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics & Operations Research Caesars Palace, Las Vegas Las Vegas, Nevada Chair: Maher Lahmar, Science Solutions & Walmart http://meetings2.informs.org/wordpress/analytics2017/

INFORMS Community Meetings Dec. 11-14, 2016

June 8-10

Winter Simulation Conference

INFORMS Marketing Science Conference

Crystal Gateway Marriott Arlington, Va. Chair: Todd Huschka, Mayo Clinic http://meetings.informs.org/wordpress/wintersim2016/

University of Southern California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, Calif.

Jan. 15-17, 2017

INFORMS Computing Science Conference Westin Austin at the Domain Austin, Texas Chair: Neil Dimitrov, UT- Austin https://ie.clemson.edu/ics2017/

Feb. 2-5

INFORMS College on Organization Science Grand Summit Hotel, Canyons Resort Park City, Utah Chair: Mary Zellmer-Bruhn, University of Minnesota http://pubsonline.informs.org/page/orsc/winter-conference

policy modeling, will be a great kickoff to our conference. Our military keynote speaker is Todd Combs, director of the Global Security Sciences Division (GSS) at Argonne National Laboratory. He will speak about the role of modeling and simulation as a service to military and homeland security decision-makers. The “Titans of Simulations,” a distinguished speaker lunchtime program, will feature professors Edward H. Kaplan and Susan Sanchez. WSC also incorporates the Modeling and Analysis of Semiconductor Manufacturing (MASM) conference-within-a-conference. This conference features a series of sessions focused on the semiconductor field and will have Robert C. Leachman of the University of CaliforniaBerkeley as its keynote. Professor Leachman will discuss “The Engineering of Speed and Delivery.” As mentioned earlier, we will have a special “Cross-Fertilization Track” where we welcome Paulette Clancy, the Bodman Professor of Chemical

June 29-30

INFORMS Revenue Management & Pricing Section Conference Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) Amsterdam https://www.informs.org/Community/revenue-mgt/ Conferences

July 10-12

INFORMS 19th Applied Probability Conference Northwestern University Evanston, Ill.

and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell; Oliver Gutsche, a staff scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; and Alexander Rutherford, scientific director, Complex Systems Modelling Group, The IRMACS Centre, Simon Fraser University. The Winter Simulation Conference is designed for professionals and academics from all backgrounds and across a broad range of interests. From the extensive group of exhibitors and vendor presentations to the meetings of various professional societies and user groups, along with various social gatherings, WSC provides all attendees the opportunity to become involved in the ever-expanding activities of the international simulation community. We hope that you have the opportunity to join us in Washington, D.C., and help us continue the great tradition of WSC. For more information, visit http://wintersim. org/2016/. ORMS Todd R. Huschka is general chair of WSC 2016.

August 2016

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Faculty Search Byrne Distinguished Professorship in Decision Science The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth seeks a full professor of operations research, management science, operations management, or a related field. This opening is for the Byrne Distinguished Professorship of Decision Science, one of only a handful of “Distinguished Professorships” on the Dartmouth campus. We expect a successful applicant to be an acknowledged international leader in the decision sciences with an exemplary track record in creating methodological advances and their applications. Examples of research topics include, but are not limited to, risk analysis, stochastic processes, discrete optimization, game theory, statistical learning, and the mathematical analysis of economic and/or social networks. This position is one of a cluster of three appointments related to the decision sciences, with the other two in Dartmouth’s Department of Mathematics. Therefore, there is the potential for cross-disciplinary work in applied mathematics with other departments across Dartmouth College. We seek a candidate who will produce research that has significant influence on the field and will teach at a level of quality consistent with Tuck's high standards. Dartmouth College is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer with a strong commitment to diversity. In that spirit, we are particularly interested in receiving applications from a broad spectrum of people, including veterans, women, persons of color, persons with disabilities, or any other legally protected group. Applicants should submit a curriculum vitae, publications, and working papers by December 1, 2016. All materials should be submitted to, http://apply.interfolio.com/30004. Questions should be sent to the chair of the recruiting committee, faculty.recruiting@tuck.dartmouth.edu.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS Faculty Positions in Operations, Information and Technology The Operations, Information and Technology (OIT) area at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, is seeking qualified applicants for full-time, tenure-track positions, starting September 1, 2017. All ranks and relevant disciplines will be considered. Applicants are considered in all areas of Operations, Information and Technology (OIT) that are broadly defined to include the analytical and empirical study of technological systems, in which technology, people, and markets interact. It thus includes operations, information systems/technology, and management of technology. Applicants are expected to have rigorous training in management science, engineering, computer science, economics, and/or statistical modeling methodologies. The appointed will be expected to do innovative research in the OIT field, to participate in the school's PhD program, and to teach both required and elective courses in the MBA program. Junior applicants should have or expect to complete a PhD by September 1, 2017. Applicants should submit their applications electronically by visiting the web site http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/recruiting and uploading their curriculum vitae, research papers and publications, and teaching evaluations, if applicable, on that site. For an application to be considered complete, all applicants must have three letters of recommendation, CV and job market paper submitted by November 15, 2016. For questions regarding the application process, please send an email to Faculty_Recruiter@gsb.stanford.edu. Stanford University is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to increasing the diversity of its faculty. It welcomes nominations of and applications from women, members of minority groups, protected veterans and individuals with disabilities, as well as from others who would bring additional dimensions to the university’s research, teaching and clinical missions.

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY KELLOGG SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT Evanston, Illinois FACULTY POSITIONS IN OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Applications are invited for faculty positions in Operations Management. The search is open to all ranks. A Ph.D. in Operations Management, Business, Engineering or related field must be in hand or expected by employment start date. Research potential, recommendations, and teaching capabilities will be the primary selection criteria. Candidates in all research areas of operations management will be considered, but they must have a thorough knowledge of operations management theory and practice. Successful applicants will be expected to do innovative research in operations management, participate in the school’s Ph.D. program, and teach required and elective MBA courses. Applications should be submitted at https://www4.kellogg.northwestern.edu/recruiting/default.aspx?dept=OPRS For full consideration, please submit a curriculum vitae, three letters of reference, and copies of publications or work in progress no later than November 23, 2016. Department representatives will attend the INFORMS meeting in Nashville, TN, November 13 – 16, 2016. Candidates attending the conference are strongly encouraged to submit a curriculum vitae, a research abstract, and any supporting materials no later than October 26, 2016. Applications will be accepted and considered until November 23, 2016. Northwestern University is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action Employer of all protected classes including veterans and individuals with disabilities. Women and minority candidates are encouraged to apply. Hiring is contingent upon eligibility to work in the United States.

BUSINESS ANALYTICS / OPERATIONS THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT’s Grossman School of Business (GSB) invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor position in Business Analytics (BA) beginning fall 2017. Applicants should have earned a doctorate in Analytics, Management Science, Operations Research, Operations Management, or in a closely related field by the start of the contract period. http://www.uvm.edu/business BA is one of four undergraduate concentrations (Accounting, Finance, and Marketing are the other concentrations). The undergraduate degree also provides a distinctive focus on three interdisciplinary themes: Global Business, Sustainable Business, and Entrepreneurship. The ideal candidate will be expected to undertake an active research program that includes publication in top quality peer-reviewed scholarly outlets as well as to teach both graduate and undergraduate students. Candidates should increase the research visibility of the School, be flexible enough to teach courses related to a variety of decision analysis topics, and should be able to contribute to one or more interdisciplinary themes. The GSB is AACSB accredited and supports about 30 multidisciplinary tenure-track faculty augmented by a number of highly experienced, professionally-qualified non tenure-track faculty. In addition to the B.S.B.A. program, we offer M.Acc. and Sustainable Entrepreneurship M.B.A. graduate programs. Candidates with expertise and the ability to teach MBA and undergraduate courses pertaining to sustainable operations, circular economy, and “green” (closed loop) supply chain practices are especially encouraged to apply. The University of Vermont is located in Burlington, VT, a city of about 45,000 that sits on the east side of Lake Champlain with the Green Mountains to the east and the Adirondack Mountains across the lake to the west. Burlington was recently ranked #1 by A&E Television on a list of the 10 cities that “have it all”. Burlington was also ranked as one of “10 Best Cities for the Next Decade” according to Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. Burlington has received accolades that include being named to the “healthiest US city” list and has appeared in Outdoor Magazine’s “best towns” listing. The Burlington International Airport offers flights to numerous U.S. destinations and the UVM Medical Center is located within the city limits. Montreal is about a 90 minute drive and Boston is less than a four hour drive. Interested candidates are encouraged to visit the City of Burlington homepage at http://www.burlington.vt.us/ and the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce homepage at: http://www.vermont.org/visiting/index.aspx. The University of Vermont is interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the academic community through their research, teaching, and/or service. The University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer, and welcomes applications from underrepresented groups. Salary and benefits are AACSB competitive. Applications must be submitted through the UVM website www.uvmjobs.com. The application package should include a cover letter, current curriculum vitae, a research statement outlining the candidate’s research plans, evidence of teaching effectiveness and at least three references. Qualified applicants with inquiries may contact the Search Committee Chair, Dr. David C. Novak at dnovak@bsad.uvm.edu. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Preference will be given to application received by December 1, 2016.

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Arthur and Helen Geoffrion Professor of Practice Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Cornell is a community of scholars, known for intellectual rigor and engaged in deep and broad research, teaching tomorrow’s thought leaders to think otherwise, care for others, and create and disseminate knowledge with a public purpose. Cornell University's School of Operations Research and Information Engineering (ORIE) seeks to fill the newly endowed Arthur and Helen Geoffrion Professor of Practice. The primary responsibility is to further ORIE’s leading role in advancing the analytical, methodological, and modeling tools of operations research together with the potential of “big data” and the information revolution. The central role is to facilitate applied research relationships with various organizations seeking Operations Research expertise, connecting ORIE faculty and students, especially Ph.D. students, with such initiatives. The position will also entail teaching responsibilities in support of the broader goal of enriching the breadth of students’ exposure to applications of OR in society today. This position is non-tenure track and is envisaged to have a term of three to five years. The position is renewable upon mutual agreement. Requisite is a strong interest in the broad mission of the School, exceptional potential for leadership in Operations Research practice and education, and an ability and willingness to teach at all levels of the program. We seek individuals that have experience in developing and implementing Operations Research tools within a broad range of industrial settings. Salary will be appropriate to qualifications and engineering school norms. Cornell ORIE is a diverse group of high-quality researchers and educators interested in probability, optimization, statistics, simulation, and a wide array of applications such as e- commerce, supply chains, scheduling, manufacturing, transportation systems, health care, financial engineering, service systems and network science. We value mathematical and technical depth and innovation, and experience with applications and practice. Ideal candidates will have correspondingly broad experience and interests. Please apply online at https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/7374 with a cover letter, CV, a statement of relevant experience, and at least three reference letters. All applications completed by October 1, 2016 will receive full consideration, but candidates are urged to submit all required material as soon as possible; applications received after October 1, 2016 will continue to be reviewed on an ongoing basis until the position is filled. ORIE and the College of Engineering at Cornell embrace diversity and seek candidates who can contribute to a welcoming climate for students of all races and genders. Cornell University seeks to meet the needs of dual career couples, has a Dual Career program, and is a member of the Upstate New York Higher Education Recruitment Consortium to assist with dual career searches. Visit http://www.unyherc.org/home/ to see positions available in higher education in the upstate New York area. Find us online at http://hr.cornell.edu/jobs or Facebook.com/CornellCareers Cornell University is an innovative Ivy League university and a great place to work. Our inclusive community of scholars, students and staff impart an uncommon sense of larger purpose and contribute creative ideas to further the university's mission of teaching, discovery and engagement. Located in Ithaca, NY, Cornell's far-flung global presence includes the medical college's campuses on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and in Doha, Qatar, as well as the new CornellNYC Tech campus to be built on Roosevelt Island in the heart of New York City.

Diversity and inclusion have been and continue to be a part of our heritage. Cornell University is a recognized EEO/AA employer and educator.

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August 2016

ORMS Today

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ORacle

Doug Samuelson

samuelsondoug@yahoo.com

The speechwriter’s parable The group of OR/MS analysts were dawdling over a nice lunch, trying to ignore the political punditry blaring over a TV in the bar area of the restaurant. Brett asked, “Say, Ben, you were a speechwriter, right?” (Brett remembered the conversation from last issue’s ORacle column.) “What do you think of the samples on display this year?” “A cringe a minute, both parties,” Ben grimaced, as the group joined in a rather hollow laugh. “Any favorites?” Jim prompted. “Yeah,” Ben nodded, “Melania Trump. Bad speeches are bad enough, but lifting a couple of key phrases from the opponents, without anyone on your team realizing it, is the kind of spectacular foul-up that reflects badly on the whole campaign organization, not just the speaker or the speechwriter. Just as there are certain kinds of mistakes in our line of work that are embarrassing way beyond the analyst and his or her boss.” “How so?” Jim asked. “The first thing a good speechwriter does,” Ben explained, “is sit with the speaker, in person, for several hours, having them try delivering lines from speeches they’ve heard or read, talking about the speaker’s own main ideas, to get a feel for their cadence, tone and vocal range. Remember how I told you that the speaker has to focus on what the audience will remember, not what the speaker wants to say? Well, the speechwriter has to focus on how the words will sound coming out of that speaker, with accompanying body language. Just try to imagine Nixon saying, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” and you see the challenge.Your words have to fit the speaker’s style, and you can only get this by extensive in-person observation. “But,” Ben continued, “it seems the Trump campaign, in the process of spending 64 | ORMS Today

August 2016

maybe a billion dollars, didn’t arrange for the speechwriter to be in the same room with Melania Trump for maybe half a day to prepare that speech! They tried to do the prep over the phone and by email or social media. Melania mentioned a few lines she’d especially liked, the speechwriter wrote them down, and nobody checked whether what got into the speech had come from someone else’s speech – Michelle Obama’s, in this case.That’s also why Melania seemed a bit awkward. English isn’t her first language, so a good speechwriter would keep the sentences short and simple. If she trips over certain pronunciations, try a different wording. A good speechwriter turns into a good speech coach, even for experienced speakers. But this campaign missed it!” “I take it you’re not a Trump fan,” Jim needled. “I’m not a fan of lack of professionalism in either party,” Ben shrugged. “At least Hillary Clinton knows how to work with her team and stay on message. She learned that the hard way, eight years ago, when she thought she knew more than she did about how to present herself and wound up getting out-organized and out-orated by Obama. Notice how Trump keeps either going off message, generating lots of stories about offensive things he said, or just sounds flat and uninspiring? He’s used to impromptu speaking and has never taken the trouble to learn how to work with a prepared text. Again, for all the money they’re spending, they’re sure not spending enough of it on some of the key things. “Just to provide a little balance,” Ben went on, “I’ll give you an example from the other side. Remember John Kerry, in 2004? That guy couldn’t say anything in a sentence when two paragraphs would do, and then he’d give you the two paragraphs closest to what he thought the question was, even if they weren’t that close. A

defining moment in that campaign was in the second debate, the one with audience questions, when a woman asked Bush whether he had made any mistakes in his first term. Bush couldn’t think of any, other than,‘A few appointments I’ve made, and I won’t embarrass them by naming them.’ And that’s where Kerry should have exclaimed,‘See? This inability to recognize mistakes and learn from them is exactly what I’ve been telling you about this guy!’ But that wasn’t in Kerry’s scripted responses, so he missed it.” “You said we make mistakes like this in our line of work,” Jerry piped up. “Examples?” “All the time,” Ben said. “How many times have you seen some cocky theorist deliver a ‘solution’ that doesn’t fit the problem the customer or sponsor descr ibed? Or some equally cocky practitioner delivering a ‘solution’ that’s basically reinventing a well-known technique, in part and with mistakes, without checking whether the problem has been solved before and what the pitfalls are? How many people keep checking whether new information they’ve uncovered should change the problem definition? Or delivering several intermediate prototypes and making sure they’re on the right track?” “Yeah,” Brett agreed. “Most of us think we know how to practice our profession well, but most people think they’re better than average drivers, too!” “And in my exper ience,” Ben concluded, “in just about any area of human accomplishment, the really good ones are always questioning how good they really are, being modest about how much they know, and seeking to keep learning wherever and however they can.Too many OR/MS analysts don’t do that – and end up sounding like some of these blowhard politicians.” ORMS Doug Samuelson (samuelsondoug@yahoo. com) is president and chief scientist of InfoLogix, Inc., in Annandale, Va.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

This was written before the Democratic Convention, so no comparable howler from the other side. Stay tuned.

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OPTIMIZATION GENERAL ALGEBRAIC MODELING SYSTEM High-Level Modeling The General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS) is a high-level modeling system for mathematical programming problems. GAMS is tailored for complex, large-scale modeling applications, and allows you to build large maintainable models that can be adapted quickly to new situations. Models are fully portable from one computer platform to another.

State-of-the-Art Solvers GAMS incorporates all major commercial and academic state-of-the-art solution technologies for a broad range of problem types.

GAMS Integrated Developer Environment for editing, debugging, solving models, and viewing data.

Object-Oriented GAMS Application Programming Interfaces The object-oriented GAMS API allows the smooth integration of GAMS into applications by providing appropriate classes for the interaction with GAMS: • Seamless integration of the GAMS system into other programming environments (.NET, Java, Python). • Use the GAMSDatabase class for in-memory representation of data for convenient exchange of input data and model results. • The GAMSJob class executes models written in GAMS. • The GAMSModelinstance class solves sequences of closely related model instances in the most efficient way.

"GAMS API is a very good way to encapsulate GAMS models inside programming languages. This API allows to have a dynamic link between the GAMS model and our applications. It is very robust and efficient. Moreover it includes a new feature that allows to solve several close instances of a same problem very fast. With this feature, we implemented very efficient sensitivity analysis of our models." Dimitri Tomanos Modeller analyst, GDF-Suez "With the GAMS .NET API we were able to implement some complex recursive MIPbased algorithms we could not easily express in the GAMS language itself. One advantage of the GAMS API was that we could reuse large parts of database access and data manipulation steps implemented in GAMS." Erwin Kalvelagen Amsterdam Optimization Modeling Group

For more information, technical documentation, and examples please visit: http://www.gams.com/help/topic/gams.doc/apis/index.html