Operations Research Society Of America Research Articles

Simulating violators by Chanoch Jacobsen and Richard Bronson Operations Research Society of America, 1985

Simulating violators by Chanoch Jacobsen and Richard Bronson Operations Research Society of America, 1985

OR Forum—ORSA as Viewed by its Members

The Operations Research Society of America is healthy and strong by most measures and continues to make important contributions to the profession. However, the Society is not without serious challenges. Full and Associate membership levels have been shrinking since 1970, and many members have raised concerns about the readability and content of our journals. At the ORSA Council's request, the Membership Committee conducted a large-scale survey to provide information needed to deal with these and other challenges. This survey revealed who members are, why we joined and continue to renew, and what we think of Society products. Findings, briefly summarized here, are now being used by the Council and committees in strategic planning that will shape the future of the Society.

A Conversation with David Blackwell

David Blackwell was born on April 24, 1919, in Centralia, Illinois. He entered the University of Illinois in 1935, and received his A.B. in 1938, his A.M. in 1939, and his Ph.D. in 1941, all in mathematics. He was a member of the faculty at Howard University from 1944 to 1954, and has been a Professor of Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, since that time. He was President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1955. He has also been Vice President of the American Statistical Association, the International Statistical Institute, and the American Mathematical Society, and President of the Bernoulli Society. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and was awarded the von Neumann Theory Prize by the Operations Research Society of America and the Institute of Management Sciences in 1979. He has received honorary degrees from the University of Illinois, Michigan State University, Southern Illinois University, and Carnegie-Mellon University. The following conversation took place in his office at Berkeley one morning in October 1984.

Variations in physician practice: the role of uncertainty.

Prologue: Nothing more underscores the reality that medical care represents a melding of art and science than the wide variation in the use and cost of that care. One of the factors that leads to practice variations is uncertainty in the minds of doctors about how to approach a particular medical problem. David Eddy, who holds a medical degree from the University of Virginia and a doctor of philosophy degree in applied mathematics from Stanford University, has made a professional career of reducing uncertainty in medical practice and helping doctors find their way to the most efficacious treatments for patients. Eddy operates at the intersection of math and medicine, applying probability theory to the uncertainty of approaches to care. Although his pursuits have not always been appreciated by the profession —many of his conclusions cut against the grain of conventional medical judgment—Eddy has been awarded the Manchester Prize by the Operations Research Society of America, the most prestigious honor that this organization of applied mathematicians bestows. Eddy was recognized for a book he authored entitled, Screening for Cancer: Theory, Analysis and Design . The essence of the book was a study undertaken by the American Cancer Society to determine how often a doctor should give women a pap smear. For forty years, the society has promoted the annual pap smear as a cancer detection treatment. Factoring in all of the relevant data and subjecting it to his mathmatical microscope, Eddy determined that the most sensible frequency for administering this test is every three years. The cancer society changed its recommendations accordingly, provoking a storm of controversy within some medical quarters. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology took particular exception to the recommended three-year frequency, but the cancer society did not waver from its new standard. Eddy is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and is a member of the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Panel on Cancer. Eddy is now developing a third-party payer process of setting reimbursement policies for medical procedures.

Productivity and the search for congruence

Kenneth D. Mackenzie. author. distinguished professor. and business consultant. is president of OSI (Organizational Systems Inc.). He presently holds the Edmund P. Learned Distinguished Professorship in the School of Business at the University of Kansas. He is a consultant to a number of diverse firms in manufacturing. banking. savings and loan. service. wholesale distribution. and other. Dr. Mackenzie's consulting services have included personal counseling to the top executives of several multinational firms in the areas of executive succession. enhancement of corporate hierarchy and strategy development. Dr. Mackenzie is the author of four books and over 40 published works on organizational structure and behavior. He is also series editor for Behavior for AHM Publishing Company. He received his Ph.D. in Business Adminstration from the University of California at Berkeley. 1964. Since then. he has served as a professor at CarnegieMellon. Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. University of Waterloo. and the University of Kansas . . He is a member of many professional organizations including Operations Research Society of America. Institute of Management Sciences. American Psychological Association. American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Management Association. He is associate editor for the journal. Management Science. in the area of Organization and serves on the Editorial Board of SySlems Management. His work, and the work of his colleagues are nationally and internationally published. He is a speaker to various companies. universities and conferences across the U.S. He was recently invited to present a major position paper for the American Productivity Center's Conference on Productivity Research. Dr. Mackenzie presented a paper entitled Manpower Waste to a joint national meeting of ORSA/ TIMS. and CORS in Toronto. Ontario in May 1981. He has collaborated with two colleagues from Canada on another paper Human Resource Planning and Organizational Design presented at the NATO Symposium in West Germany in June 1981.

Health Applications Section of the Operations Research Society of America

Health Applications Section of the Operations Research Society of America

Health applications section of the Operations Research Society of America

Health applications section of the Operations Research Society of America

Health Applications Section of the Operations Research Society of America

Health Applications Section of the Operations Research Society of America

Introduction to the special issue on recent and future development of mathematical programming systems

In the early 1950's, a communication gap developed between those doing research in mathematical programming and those practicing its application. In the 60's and early 70's. the gap widened. Many, if not most, students who obtained even an advanced degree majoring in operations research or math programming were unaware of the process by which "real-world" applications were undertaken and solved. They were "spared" the trouble. Several groups, including the Computer Science Technical Section of the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA), the Committee on Algorithms (COAL) of the Mathematical Programming Society and the Special Interest Group for Mathematical Programming (SIGMAP) of the Association for Computing Machinery, have recognized this problem. The result was to organize sessions at the ORSA/TIMS meetings and the recent Mathematical Programming Symposium and to produce several Special Issues of the <u>SIGMAP Bulletin</u> to close the gap. This first special issue is the written account of the session on April 30, 1970, at the ORSA/TIMS meeting in New Orleans entitled "Recent and Future Developments in Mathematical Programming Systems," co-chaired by Richard Jackson and Richard O'Neill. Invitations to speak at the session and to submit a paper for the special issue were extended to each major commercial vendor of a math programming system in the free world. All accepted and presented papers. Only one, SCICONIC, by their choosing, is not represented in this issue. Additionally, a panel of long-time and knowledgeable users were also invited to comment on the presentations. The panel consisted of Harvey Greenberg, Milt Gutterman, Tom White and the co-chairmen. Throughout this issue, the theme is to summarize the develonment of math programming systems in the 70's and project their development in the 80'S. As an introduction we include a short historical summary. Computer codes for solving linear programs were initially developed between 1948 and 1952. In the early 50's, the solution of a linear program of 100 equations was considered a very difficult task for a computer. In the mid 50's, accuracy and speed of both the computers and the algorithms increased, and parameteric procedures were developed. In the late 50's, new inversion techniques, implicit upper bounding and the dual algorithm were introduced. In the early 60's, matrix generation and renort writing were automated and math programming systems became a part of a new generation of large computers. Problems with 1,000 rows and 5,000 columns were solved routinely. (For more detail on the historical development the reader is referred to the two references.

Health applications section of the Operations Research Society of America

Health applications section of the Operations Research Society of America

Health applications section of the Operations Research Society of America

Health applications section of the Operations Research Society of America

Health applications section of the Operations Research Society of America

Health applications section of the Operations Research Society of America

The use of Operational Research Techniques for Capital Budgeting Decisions. A Sample Survey

An extensive literature exists which suggests that operational research methodology can be applied to capital budgeting decision-making. This paper reports on the use of such techniques by some U.S. firms. The data was obtained by a questionnaire mailed in November 1974 to 1000 randomly selected firms in the U.S. that had an employee who was a member of the Operations Research Society of America.

Health Applications Section of the Operations Research Society of America

Health Applications Section of the Operations Research Society of America

Health applications section of the Operations Research Society of America

Health applications section of the Operations Research Society of America

Health Applications Section of the Operations Research Society of America

Health Applications Section of the Operations Research Society of America

An Optimization Approach to Routing Aircraft. Robert Richardson. Transportation Science, Volume 10, Number 1, February 1976, pp. 52-71. Operations Research Society of America, 428 East Preston Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21202

An Optimization Approach to Routing Aircraft. Robert Richardson. Transportation Science, Volume 10, Number 1, February 1976, pp. 52-71. Operations Research Society of America, 428 East Preston Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21202

The 1975 Lanchester Prize

Each year since 1954 the Council of the Operations Research Society of America has offered the Lanchester Prize for the best English-language published contribution in operations research. The Prize for 1975 consists of $2,000 and a commemorative medallion. The screening of books and papers for the 1975 Prize will be carried out by a Committee appointed by the Council of the Society. To be eligible for consideration, the book or paper must be nominated to the Committee. Nominations may be made by anyone; this notice constitutes a call for nominations.

An Airline Overbooking Policy. E. Shlifer and Y. Vardi. Transportation Science, Volume 9, Number 2, May 1975, pp. 101-114. Operations Research Society of America, 428 East Preston Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21202. $3.50

An Airline Overbooking Policy. E. Shlifer and Y. Vardi. Transportation Science, Volume 9, Number 2, May 1975, pp. 101-114. Operations Research Society of America, 428 East Preston Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21202. $3.50

Determination of optimal headways for urban rapid transit systems : Lingaraj BP, Chatterjee A and Sinha KC (1974) 1974 joint national meeting of the Operations Research Society of America and the Institute of Management Sciences. Paper available from Arun Chatterjee, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Tennessee, 118 Perkins Hall, Knoxville, Tennessee 37916, U.S.A.

Determination of optimal headways for urban rapid transit systems : Lingaraj BP, Chatterjee A and Sinha KC (1974) 1974 joint national meeting of the Operations Research Society of America and the Institute of Management Sciences. Paper available from Arun Chatterjee, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Tennessee, 118 Perkins Hall, Knoxville, Tennessee 37916, U.S.A.