INFORMS Today: The Podcast Series: Recent Episodes
INFORMS
A series of podcasts with unexpected insights into the way that math, analytics, and operations research affect people like you and organizations like your own. In every segment, an expert explains how he or she changed the world by crunching the numbers. (www.informs.org).
How well do you use analytics? The creators of the INFORMS Analytics Maturity Model discuss what you can do to improve your company’s analytics.
How should a business leader interested in Big Data – whether a newcomer or a professional with analytics experience – develop and implement a major Big Data initiative?
Predicting mass killings and genocide so that international bodies can intervene and prevent disaster.
When former INFORMS President Brenda Dietrich and two colleagues contemplated ways to explain the myriad possibilities for organizations to use analytics, they decided to exemplify their ideas by opening the IBM vault and sharing highlights of how they had used analytics internally to solve difficult business problems.
High employee turnover is bad for business. Predictive analytics can help you hire employees most likely to remain with your organization and flag veteran employees who may depart. The benefit goes straight to return on investment. Hear Talent Analytics’ Greta Roberts on why analytics is becoming an important part of human resources and contributing to the bottom line.
Heineken is a popular beer in the U.S. and across the world not only because of its qualities as a beer but also because of the marketing acumen used to bring it to the public.
When Innovative Decisions, Inc. (IDI) committed 11 of its analysts to go for INFORMS CAP (Certified Analytics Professional) certification, it set both a record and an example for other consulting groups and corporations to follow.
Showing young people how to avoid the disastrous choices that can ruin lives – and make the kinds of decisions that help them navigate this most difficult period in a person’s life using ahoona.com, a social network that helps teens share their decision dilemmas and solutions with their peers.
HR departments routinely collect information about their employees. But what happens when they use predictive analytics to predict if someone might leave the company – and that someone is you?
A heated political controversy in the U.S. surrounds the amount of regulation that government should apply to private industry. A corollary to the issue is a question: can't we all get by with self-regulation? A study in the Oct issue of Management Science draws strong conclusions from experiments conducted by three researchers. Find out what the investigators would recommend to the U.S. Congress.
In a new study, Analytics Skills, Tools, and Attitudes 2013: Analytics capabilities needed now and in the future, Lavastorm Analytics takes a deep look into the way that organizations are employing analytics, what skills gap remains, and what departments are using analytics talent.
Do you want to hire a single analytics professional – or start an analytics department? Using analytics to identify analytics professionals, the HR consultants Talent Analytics have identified the key characteristics of successful analytics professionals.
Sometimes our perceived virTue are really our faults. Kicking bad work habits that masquerade as virTue is the theme of Tipping Sacred Cows by Duke Corporate Education's Jake Breeden. Breeden touched on his suggestions for analytics and O.R. professionals in a videotaped session during the 2013 INFORMS Analytics Conference. He offers more insights into how to improve your soft skills in this interview.
What do business people need to know about working with analytics and O.R. people if they want the working relationship to be successful? Tom Davenport, who co-authored the groundbreaking Competing on Analytics, is back with a new title, co-written with Jinho Kim: Keeping Up with the Quants: Your Guide to Understanding Analytics + Using Analytics. Hear him discuss his new title and his new position on the INFORMS CAP Analytics Certification Board in this new podcast.
Doing the calculations is one part of your job as an analytics professional. Communicating your results to colleagues and those outside your field is another, and it can be difficult using words and diagrams to make your most important results understandable to others. In this podcast, Evan Levine, the author of Fundamental Principles of Analytic Communication, which appears in Analytics Magazine, and the new Applying-Analytics: A Practical Introduction, discusses four principles of communicating analytics, and how you can achieve them. Make sure you master them.
Sometimes academics publish and wonder if anyone out there is reading. In the case of Eric Bickel of the University of Texas, he found that one person was. Early in his career Bickel did research on sports analytics/O.R., specifically strategies for baseball players at the plate and their managers. He asked, when should a batter take a pitch? In 2009 he published a related paper in Decision Analysis. Afterward, he received a thank you from a minor league catcher who had begun following his advice. It turns out that that player was Evan_Gattis, now the hot rookie with the Atlanta Braves, and when Sports Illustrated covered Gattis' remarkable first year, it wrote about Bickel's influence on Gattis' hitting. Learn more about this remarkable experience in this new podcast.
Big Data provides big challenges, even for experts in advanced analytics and operations research. In this segment recorded at the INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research that took place in San Antonio this spring, Brian Keller of Booz Allen Hamilton jumped in with a talk entitled, “Getting Started with Big Data Analytics.” Listen to him as he examines systems, software, and the many ingredients that you can use to implement Big Data solutions.
Like it or not, the Affordable Care Act – dubbed Obamacare by detractors and supporters alike – will become the law of the land in the United States in less than a year. How are hospitals beginning to cope with important data management requirements? How are healthcare analytics professionals guiding hospital administrators as they prepare for a brave new future? Listen to former INFORMS President President Don Kleinmuntz of Strata Decision Technology explore the growing role of analytics and hospital management in this broad-ranging interview recorded at the 2013 INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics.
One of the challenges for an expert in any specialized field is explaining highly technical information to internal and external clients. This has been a longstanding problem for consultants in analytics and operations research who work with business people who can’t understand the field’s highly mathematical framework. At the 2013 INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research Carrie Beam of Carrie Beam Consulting. gave a workshop with solid advice for analytics consultants who need to find a common language with clients. Afterward, she sat down to record this useful podcast. Listen and learn.
In an era when unstructured data from video and other formats is becoming increasingly available for examination, the power of analytics to yield important recommendations is growing. In a column published in the current issue of the INFORMS publication Analytics Magazine, Atanu Basu of Ayata provides valuable advice on using prescriptive analytics. In his second Science of Better podcast, hear him provide some essentials tips.
English physicist Patrick Blackett had served in the Royal Navy during WWI, leaving to study physics at Cambridge. He brought both experiences to his development of operations research on behalf of the United Kingdom, fighting against a devastating sea campaign that threatened to cripple his country’s economy. In Blackett’s War: The Men Who Defeated the Nazi U-Boats and Brought Science to the Art of Warfare, author Stephen Buidansky tells the story of Blackett, also highlighting the contributions of American Philip Morse. Listen to this fascinating interview with Stephen Budiansky about one of the inventors of operations research.
Sure operations research and analytics are connected. But when it comes down to professional skills - the hard technical skills and the soft skills that business people need - how similar, and different are practitioners of the two? In a new examination of a survey completed by INFORMS members that appears in the March issue of the INFORMS journal Interfaces, Matthew Liberatore and Wenhong Luo of Villanova University highlight differences in hard skills and similarities in soft business skills. Hear them clearly define the two professions in this enlightening podcast.
Some Americans might find relief and delight in eliminating TV ads from presidential campaigns. But the effect of advertising, especially in close contests, can be important enough to put the best advertiser in the White House. Brett R. Gordon of Columbia University and Wesley R. Hartmann looked at the campaigns of 2000 and 2004 in their study, Advertising Effects in Presidential Elections, which appears in the current issue of the INFORMS journal Marketing Science. Hear them explain the subtle distinctions between product advertising and political advertising, and how one advertising campaign was key to winning office.
Big Data is creating big opportunities – and also big challenges for executives and managers at companies who have decided to make an investment in analytics software but need guidance making an expensive choice among varied solutions.Michael Gualtieri, the Principal Analyst serving Application Development and Delivery Professionals at Forrester Research, is the principle author in a Forrester report entitled The Forrester Wave: Big Data Predictive Analytics Solutions Q1 2013. Hear him preview the report in this podcast.
If you're in government, product marketing, or any field that craves insight into what the public feels, you probably use sentiment analysis, which assesses whether an article or blog entry or online review is positive, negative, or neutral and draws macro conclusions from all the data. But developing an algorithm or model to understand the nuance of language is still a skill in its infancy. Maksim Tsvetovat of Deepmile Networks and George Mason University believes that current methods have serious flaws. He offers a unique approach in Implicit Sentiment Mining, an article he co-authored with Jacqueline Kazil and Alex Kouznetsov. It appears in the current issue of ORMS Today. You'll gain insight into the current state and the future promise of sentiment analytics in this insightful podcast.
The traditional method of brainstorming is great for generating ideas - up to a point. With its time limit and lack of guidance to participants, some ideas don't get expressed, so they can't be considered when decision time comes along. INFORMS decision analysis pioneer Ralph Keeney, Professor Emeritus at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, makes his recommendations about improving the brainstorming process in his study Value-Focused Brainstorming, which appears in the current issue of Decision Analysis. He explains his important new method in this revealing podcast.
If you discovered a technology that could increase your return on assets by as much as 15% wouldn’t you adopt it? Surprisingly, a minority of Fortune 1000 companies actually target their customers and make better decisions using analytics in their marketing decisions. Gary L.Lilien, a leading force in the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science and former president of the INFORMS predecessor society TIMS, explains the surprising results in an upcoming study, Performance Implications of Marketing Analytics, co-authored by Arvind Rangaswamy and Frank Germann.
Big Data is becoming a source of new insights, growth, profit, and better customer service – for organizations that know how to use analytics to explain all that data. The IBM Institute for Business Value, together with the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, issued a white paper, "Analytics: The real-world use of Big Data. How innovative enterprises extract value from uncertain data." Listen to Michael Schroeck, a partner and vice president for IBM Global Business Services, as he explains the important findings.
With memories of the terror attacks of Sepember 11, 2001 now receding, the threat of future attacks remains real. At the INFORMS annual meeting in Phoenix, legendary air safety expert Arnold Barnett of MIT's Sloan School stressed the continued danger of attacks on subway and rail systems. He went on to encourage intelligence services to continue operations to prevent attacks on mass transit like those that took place in London, Madrid, and Mumbai. Hear his unique take on the continued peril of terrorist attack.
Pollsters predict a neck-and-neck contest between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Governor Mitt Romney on Election Day. So why are two operations researchers so confident that President Obama can't lose? In this podcast, listen to American University Professor Allan Lichtman, author of Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House 2012, and University of Illinois Professor Sheldon Jacobson, whose election forecasting website is at http://electionanalytics.cs.illinois.edu/index.html. More about their methods is in an upcoming issue of ORMS Today and an article by Doug Samuelson in the current issue of Analytics Magazine. You can hear them in person at the 2012 INFORMS Annual Meeting at this special workshop.
Michael Lewis may have created a sensation around sports analytics in his bestseller and the movie starring Brad Pitt, but there's a much bigger story to be told. Interfaces, the INFORMS journal, has published a two-part issue devoted to ways that math modeling can improve performance and the business of sports. The previous issue of the journal was devoted to a range of O.R. sports research and the current issue is devoted to sports scheduling. Listen to co-editors Michael Fry of the University of Cincinnati and Jeffrey Ohlmann of the University of Iowa talk about measuring driving and putting excellence in golf, improving baseball player drafts, why goalies rule, and more.
Moving to a pay per click system in online advertising, especially if that means pay per sale, was meant to reduce the cost of ads and make the whole system more efficient. Then why does the system actually lower revenue and profits? In his June, 2012 study in the INFORMS journal Management Science, Chrysanthos Dellarocas of Boston University explains the phenomenon of double marginalization - and how he would fix it.
Almost half the industry leaders cited in the 1982 best-seller "In Search of Excellence" no longer exist or are badly underperforming. What goes into the decline of a company? And how does shortsightedness in the application of analytics contribute to these kinds of downfalls? Listen to SAS consultant Gary Cokins, the author of "Why Do Large, Once-Successful Companies Fail?" in the current issue of Analytics Magazine and a piece about the obstacle course for analytics that appeared earlier this year in ORMS Today as he casts light on the make or break power of analytics.
American manufacturing is doing better than many pundits credit, and it can grow still further - but will American policymakers take the steps needed? Or will the glory days when America was the "Arsenal of Democracy," fade further still? The University of Michigan's Tauber Institute for Global Operations and Booz & Co. collaborated on a report, Manufacturing's Wake-Up Call. Listen to former Management Science editor-in-chief Wally Hopp and Tauber co-director Roman Kapuscinski in this look at the American economy from the perspective of two respected management scientists.
Experts in analytics and operations research have long argued that you cannot properly understand a phenomenon unless you can apply metrics that explain it in numbers. U.S. Army Major Rob Dees strongly believes that this concept also applies to the Department of Defense obtaining and retaining the best fighting men and women. A researcher for the Mayo Clinic and speaker at a session during this month's INFORMS Conference on Analytics, Major Dees speaks at length in this podcast recorded at the INFORMS Huntington Beach conference.
In the B2B environment, social media has risen to a whole new importance for marketers. In a preview of her presentation at the 2012 INFORMS Conference on Analytics this April, Theresa Kushner, the Senior Director of Customer Intelligence at Cisco, explains how Cisco is going beyond analyzing traditional online metrics to better understand its customers and retain market share in an increasingly competitive environment. Hear her discuss Connecting the Stars: Applying Social Media Understanding to a Structured Marketing Data Environment in a B2B World.
It's spring, and a young man's fancy turns to, well, um, college basketball. Operations researchers are here to make sure your heart's desire (winning your office pool) comes true. Sheldon Jacobson of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign returns this year to share his approach to bracketology, the forecasting of odds in the NCAA Men's Division Basketball Championship. Listen to him and visit his website at bracketodds.cs.illinois.edu. You can even revisit his 2011 appearance with Georgia Tech's Joel Sokol by clicking here.
Women are finally beginning to rise above the barriers that once kept them from leadership in major organizations. How does the new generation of women leaders differ from their male counterparts? From women in the general population? In today's podcast, Renée Adams of the University of New South Wales and Patricia Funk of Universitat Pompeau Fabra and Barcelona Graduate School of Economics discuss their new study, Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Does Gender Matter?, which appears in the current issue of the INFORMS journal Management Science.
Whether you call it the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, the law enacted in 2010 has generated strong debate about healthcare in America and the need to balance volume (healthcare providers billing by the number of services provided) with value (a results-based approach tying payment to better health). In this podcast, Atanu Basu, the founder and CEO of analytics software company Ayata, discusses an article on the special role of analytics in healthcare that he co-wrote with Pete Horner in the current, special
A physician may not have more than 15 minutes to discuss your most pressing health issues. So what do you do when you get home and need to make serious choices? Stanford University Professor Stefanos Zenios, the new Editor-in-Chief of the INFORMS journal Operations Research, took a leave of absence to develop a website devoted to patients with kidney disease and other ailments. Listen to him and Dr. Constantia Petrou as they discuss www.konnectology.com, the decision-making website they created for patients with funding from the National Institutes of Health.
What do quantum theory, Schopenhauer, Goethe, and Spinoza have to teach us about the economic disaster of 2007-8? Quite a bit, maintains Emanuel Derman of Columbia University's Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department. Hear him discuss his new book, Models Behaving Badly: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality Can Lead to Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life.
Foreclosures have devastated neighborhoods, and not just those in inner cities. How can a community development corporation compete with private realtors to acquire a core of foreclosed properties and rehabilitate them in an effort to save a neighborhood? Michael P. Johnson of the University of Massachusetts Boston, author of Community-Based Operations Research and Chair of the INFORMS Section INFORMS Section on Public Programs, Service, and Needs, explains how math modelers help small groups with limited resources do a lot of good.
Professor Laura McLay of Virginia Commonwealth University is a trend setter with her blog Punk Rock Operations Research. Hear her talk about the importance of social media; applying O.R. to healthcare topics like emergency care in extreme weather; why the Chicago Bears are the best football team ever; and her roles as an operations researcher, woman, and mother.
In the post-Osama bin Laden age, the U.S. and nations around the world still face the danger of terrorism in many forms. One threat is terrorists smuggling nuclear material through ports and across borders to assemble a nuclear weapon for a domestic attack. At the 2011 INFORMS annual meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina in November, Prof. Gaukler and colleagues present a paper on O.R. methods used to fight this threat. Prof. Gaukler previews his research in this podcast.
What can discoveries about the human brain teach forecasters, computer scientists, and corporate executives? And why is hockey legend Wayne Gretsky the perfect example of these teachings? Former USA Today reporter Kevin Maney, who wrote a popular article about algorithms in the 1990s, discusses The Two-Second-Advantage: How We Succeed by Anticipating the Future—Just Enough, the new title he wrote with Vivek Ranadivé.
As columnist Vijay Mehrotra explains in the current issue of Analytics Magazine, something has been going right in the city of Raleigh since 2006. Yet if analytics is a household word today, it wasn't five years ago. Michael Rappa, Director of the Institute for Analytics at North Carolina State University, tells how his program began a trend and how it now places 90% of its graduates as the field of analytics flourishes
Picture yourself staring at the screen as your brand X online search for a flight goes on and on. Now look at a travel service like Kayak that explains how the system is checking one airline and one flight after another. Where would you rather search? Would you even be willing to wait slightly longer if you felt you had a window into what was going on as you waited? In the Sepember issue of Management Science, doctoral student Ryan W. Buell and Assoc. Prof. Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School explore the tradeoffs of the way you wait on the Internet. No reason to wait – hear them explain their research in this week's podcast.
Our emergency rooms have become an alarming example of the physical dangers that can arise from congestion. In an article in the current issue of ORMS Today, Doug Samuelson of InfoLogix, together with emergency care physician Dr. David Eitel of the Wellspan Health System, examines the problems in today's ER's and the creative ways that operations researchers are offering solutions. Hear Doug, who last podcast on the American election system, provide his overview.
Overconfidence can lead CEOs to make bad investment decisions or, worse, choices that leave them squirming in testimony before Parliament. But it can also be their saving grace. The current issue of Management Science includes a revealing study about the positive impact of CEO overconfidence on corporate innovation. Hear the authors, Alberto Galasso of the University of Toronto and Timothy Simcoe Timothy Coe of Boston University, explain their surprising results.
Can the same applications that speed a manufacturer's supply chain also improve disaster relief? Returning guests Pinar Keskinocak and Julie Swann, who co-direct the Center for Health and Humanitarian Logistics at the Georgia Institute of Technology with Ozlem Ergun, provide a sweeping picture of how operations research provides vast humanitarian benefits. The current issue of the INFORMS journal Interfaces, which they edited, includes a refreshing range of humanitarian apps. Hear their discussion of the special issue, including a profile of Prof. Keskinocak's teamwork for CARE International.
The Facebook experience suggests that hundreds of millions of online social media users worldwide have thrown their privacy to the wind. But would consumers, when presented with the choice, opt to pay more to ensure their privacy during online transactions? In their new study in the INFORMS Journal Information Systems Research, Carnegie Mellon's Alessandro Acquisti and colleagues conducted an intriguing experiment that found an unexpected willingness to pay for online privacy. Listen to Prof. Acquisti discuss the results and the unusual experiment that led to these conclusions.
With President Obama declaring a troop drawdown in Afghanistan and counterinsurgency efforts there coming under question, a Defense Department report issued earlier this year sheds welcome light. In April, the Defense Science Board this year issued a peering report into ways that the intelligence community can improve its efforts. The report follows a 2009 report by the board recommending that the Department of Defense make better use of O.R. in intelligence. Hear the co-chairman of the task force that wrote both reports explain their importance.
When you go online to research the doctor who will treat you for cancer or perform your surgery, how sure are you that the ratings you're reading are true? Hear controversial research by the University of Maryland's Ritu Agarwal, Guodong (Gordon) Gao, and Brad N. Greenwood, who, together with Jeffrey McCullough of the University of Minnesota, present their paper at INFORMS Healthcare 2011, which takes place in Montreal this June.
With 80,000 Americans awaiting kidney transplants on any given day, the sad fact is that many people with renal disease will wait years and some will die before a suitable kidney becomes available. A new system for scheduling a fleet of airplanes to fly recipients to cities with available organs may substantially reduce that waiting time. Hear Sridhar Tayur of Carnegie Mellon University and physician Anton Skaro of Northwestern University preview the paper that co-author Baris Ata will present at INFORMS Healthcare 2011, which takes places in Montreal from June 20-22.
In an article in Analytics Magazine, Ryan M. Rodenberg and Anastasios Kaburakis explain how cases involving the NFL, the NCAA, and NASCAR are making legal headlines. In this accompanying podcast, hear them explain how analytics is playing an increasingly important role in sports law. And listen to special advice for operations researchers on becoming expert witnesses.
Carnegie Mellon's Jonathan Caulkins, the leading math modeler specializing in drug trafficking, recounts what he learned about stopping drug use from the coca fields of Columbia, the collapsed drug trade of Australia, and the models of legendary marketing scientist Frank Bass. Hear his observations - and his proposals for reducing drug use - in this interview on a problem that has plagued the Western World for generations.
In the weeks before the INFORMS Analytics conference, ComputerWorld columnist Thornton May podcast some hints on how he would interact with his panelists. Hear him after the fireworks on the surprising insights from FICO's Larry Rosenberg, Gartner VP Bill Hostmann, Sirius XM Radio's Kaiser Fung, and Scott Friesen of Best Buy.
With states cutting budgets and forcing localities to make painful decisions, operations researcher discusses his 2011 INFORMS Analytics Conference presentaition, Analytics to Help Rationalize Police, Fire, and Emergency Medical Services. Hear Prof. Chelst's controversial recommendations about making cuts without sacrificing lives.
Thornton May has made his reputation in the IT world – he is a ComputerWorld columnist and serves as Executive Director of the IT Leadership Academy – but he's a man who knows value when he sees it. The author of "The New Know: Analytics, Innovation, and Transformation" will do a guest tour of a high level panel on analytics at the INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research in Chicago.
In the U.S. every spring, sports fans are possessed with a condition called March Madness as the top basketball teams in the country compete in a tournament to determine the champion team of the year. Throughout American workplaces, employees have their own competition in the form of office pools. Hear two experts in the math of sports provide their special forecasts. Georgia Tech's Professor Joel Sokol Joel Sokol has his March Madness website here. University of Illinois Professor Sheldon Jacobson Sheldon Jacobson's March Madness website is here .
In troubled economic times, business leaders can take two approaches to their assets: they can take out the budget knife, resulting in temporary savings and long-term damage to their companies; or they can ask themselves how they can optimize, making what’s good about their organizations even better. Princeton Consultants' Steve Sashihara, author of the new title The Optimization Edge, provides management and C-level executives with strong advice on how to succeed at optimization projects in this revealing interview.
IBM's Deep Blue proved its mettle playing chess against human grandmasters. But could the numbers crunchers at the IBM Watson Center create a program that would allow a computer to play in a free format question-and-answer game show? Stephen Baker, the former BusinessWeek reporter and author of the 2009 book The Numerati explains the story behind the February, 2011 contest on the popular television series Jeopardy. Hear the author of the new Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything.
J. Eric Bickel of the University of Texas collaborated with the controversial filmmaker Bjorn Lomborg on his documentary, Cool It, which has generated debate among students of global warming. In a chapter in Lomborg's new volume, Smart Solutions to Climate Change, Bickel examines the most promising technologies for slowing climate change.
What does the downturn in the global economy mean for companies that must plan complex operations and supply chain management in the face of volatile oil prices, diminished consumer demand, and pressures on businesses to go green? MIT's David Simchi-Levi, Editor-in-Chief of the INFORMS journal Operations Research, provides rules that are as tightly constructed as the laws of physics in his new book, Operations Rules. Listen to his essential advice for business executives.
Can analytics help an HR department hire and retain top staff? You bet, says Jeanne G. Harris of Accenture. Hear the co-author of Competing on Analytics and the new Analytics at Work explain how to put the right metrics in place and improve your workforce.
Demand on America's electric power grid will be affected by everything from a projected increase in electric cars to new policies reducing the carbon footprint. Two things are for certain: One, that providing energy will be very different in just a few short years. And two, that quantitative experts are needed to plan for change. Hear Joan Woodard, Executive Vice President Emeritus at Sandia National Labs, elaborate on her INFORMS Annual Meeting Plenary in this look at energy's future.
Business Intelligence (BI) is becoming an increasingly important method of capitalizing on the data that most businesses and organizations now store. Bill Hostmann, a Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner, provides a sophisticated approach to making BI a core competency.
What will the 2010 midterm elections mean for Congressional Democrats? And why won't their loss of seats sink the hopes of President Obama for a second term? History Professor Allan Lichtman of American University explains what his model, The Keys to the White House, forecasts for 2012 and why the surprisingly uphill battle will be for Republican presidential hopefuls.
How can online merchants learn more about their potential customers by mining the data surrounding social media – without violating strict privacy rules? Claudia Perlich of Media6Degrees explains how she and her colleagues zero in on individual customers in projects that have benefited Netflix, IBM, and healthcare providers.
Shouldn't major business decisions about acquiring a company be made strictly on the merits? Hear surprising discoveries about the way that male CEOs testosterone levels affects their business judgment, and discoveries about how having women on a company's board can improve the way a company conducts mergers and acquisitions in this unusual exploration into physiology's impact on the business world.
Turbulence on Wall Street Financial engineering came under a microscope in August 2007, when so-called "quant funds" suffered hundreds of millions of dollars of losses. A year later, when economic turmoil broadly hit finance and banking, mathematical modeling came again under scrutiny. Former Wall Street Journal reporter Scott Patterson examines the wins and losses in his new book "The Quants."
Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has a unique qualification: He holds a master's degree in operations research, making him one of the highest placed executives - and military men – in the world with a quantitative degree. In an exclusive interview, Admiral Mullen tells how his expertise in the decision sciences helps him make difficult choices for the armed services of the United States. Hear the admiral share his special views on how analytics in the military and business sector intersect.
In today's world of spy vs. spy, you need to do more than outfight your opponent; you need to out-think him, as well. Edward H. Kaplan of Yale University, the 2010- 2011 INFORMS Morse Lecturer has been using analytics to model potential terror and bioterror attacks since 9-11 and the anthrax mailings that followed weeks later. In a study, Terror Queues, appearing in the upcoming July/August issue of Operations Research, he explains how techniques now being used to study grocery store queues can also be used to assess the strength of terror plotters. This analysis, in turn, strengthens the ability of governments to thwart planned attacks on civilians. You’ll be amazed at the novel thinking in these new techniques.
If you want to improve your bottom line, you'll find that determining a better price for your product is far less painful than trying to drive costs down. As some business people grow more sophisticated in their pricing and do more than just set prices by conjecture, one expert wonders why most businesses don't set prices scientifically. Dr. E. Andrew Boyd, who appears regularly on KUHF-FM's Engines of our Ingenuity and in the pages of Analytics, has worked with major airlines setting prices. Hear him explain the history of pricing and reservations in the airlines - including the unexpected roll of gumballs. What you'll learn will surprise you.
When digital cameras were developing, analysts watching the stocks of companies like Kodak and Polaroid said, 'stay with film'. And when VoIP Internet phones began, stock analysts cautioned telecommunications companies about entering the new market. Why? Hear Wharton's Mary J. Benner, author of the study Securities Analysts and Incumbent Response to Radical Technological Change, published by Organization Science, explain her surprising findings.
In an age when advances in technology are threatened by attackers who would hack and disable that technology, the United States and other governments are focusing more and more resources on protecting their infrastructure. Professors at the Naval Postgraduate School are conducting extensive research into protecting the U.S. transportation, communications, and energy systems. Hear David Alderson explain what his colleagues are pioneering - and why the controversy about the best way to protect the infrastructure is more contentious than ever.
When physicians choose radiation to battle cancer and cancerous tumors, they are fighting not just in three dimensions but four – they must take into account not only the shape and size of the cancer but also the fourth dimension of time in modeling treatment. Learn how O.R. innovations have helped create treatment plans that do a better job healing patients, avoiding radiation damage to healthy tissue, and saving a half billion dollars.
Predicting the purchasing patterns of consumers has been an inexact science for math modelers, but two researchers believe the answer is not in modeling the way that consumers behave but mapping their many disparate thoughts and actions on the way to their purchase decision. Hear Warren Lieberman and Michael Raskin of Veritec Solutions on new insights into a perennial challenge for marketers.
Where is the intersection between IT and analytics? MIT's Michael Schrage says the two may very well meet in the simple experiments that companies can do via social media and in the retail store. Schrage, who speaks at the 2010 INFORMS Practice Meeting, previews his provocative talk for CIOs and executives in this vibrant podcast. Register for the practice meeting to hear Schrage and analytics experts from top companies at http://meetings.informs.org/Practice2010.
When the reservoir for America's largest city, environmentalists, and local residents clash, can the interests of all be resolved? The Delaware River Basin Commission, was able to redress the needs of all these groups, as well as the four states sitting on the commission. In the process, the commission and its partners earned a nomination as a finalist in the 2010 Franz Edelman Competition. Learn how operations research was the key from lead researcher Peter Kolesar of Columbia University.
What are the dangers of flying in the wake of the Christmas bomber? What's the danger of runway collisions in airports like Los Angeles International? How significant are differences in safety record between airlines in First World and developing countries? Should we beware smaller, regional carriers, as a PBS Frontline program suggested? MIT's Arnold Barnett, an operations researcher and expert in air safety, explains his research in this important broadcast. (And watch for publication of his study later this year in Transportation Science.)
Are you looking for a consultant who's an expert in business analytics and operations research? Hear Brian Lewis of Vanguard Software walk you through the steps of determining your needs, picking a consultant, and collaborating in this do-it-yourselfer for business people hiring O.R. providers.
Businesses are increasingly turning to O.R. consultants and vendors to improve performance and make important decisions. But before the work begins, everyone needs to think through the plan, clean up the data, and find the right tools for the job. Listen to SAS's Mary Grace Crissey as she reviews today's O.R./business collaborations and advises everyone what to expect.
Learn where traditional advertising and word-of-mouth diverge, how marketing scientists are exploring the surprising way that everyday conversation makes business grow.
As the Haitian earthquake tragedy unfolds, the challenge of using the very best humanitarian logistics – supply chain management principles for emergencies and disasters – becomes crucial for those speeding relief to victims. The Center for Health and Humanitarian Logistics explain how their team models the way rescuers can rapidly deploy to nations that face natural and manmade calamities.
How can you survey data more carefully so your candidate will win a tight election? Doug Samuelson of Infologix talks about using operations research to help at the polls, how 2009's Congressional and gubernatorial elections signal 2010's races, and what the Keys to the White House suggest about the 2012 presidential election. Bonus: Hear Doug explain his homeland security research on escaping from an attack in a public place.
How can we make life and death decisions? How should business approach costly endeavors? What helps teenagers avoid mistakes that could derail the rest of their lives? Stanford Professor Ronald A. Howard was present at the creation of decision theory and decision analysis. Hear the decision guru explain how to scientifically approach the important decisions in our work and lives. Read his full-length interview in the current issue of Decision Analysis.
Few scientists today doubt the seriousness of climate change and the dangers of global warming. Yet political leaders and the public have still not made the reduction of greenhouse gases and pollutants a priority. Hear MIT Professor John Sterman explain how math modelers empower decisionmakers and voters alike to examine the data and its implications, using the tools found at www.ClimateInteractive.org.
Whether we take a trip on the highway or the virtual superhighway that we call the Internet, we are all caught up in a network – hopefully not one that's crumbling. Hear Prof. Professor Anna Nagurney, Director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of "Fragile Networks" Fragile Networks, discuss what's going right in our networks of highways, broadband networks, and financial networks – and why the work ahead is critical.
Ever seen the cartoon of the statistician who waded in a river whose average depth was three feet and drowned when it dipped to six feet? Averages only tell you so much, and Professor Sam L. Savage of Stanford University has made a cause of his career warning against simplistic mathematical assumptions. The author of "The Flaw of Averages: Why We Underestimate the Face of Uncertainty" offers his perspective in this segment.
Fans of baseball and other sports have been fascinated with data and statistics for decades. In recent years, though, numbers crunchers beginning with Bill James have been delving deeper to settle sports arguments, help teams plan, and tell municipal planners if there's any money for their cities in building large sports stadiums. Hear Jim Cochran, an expert in sports and analytics, tell you what the numbers reveal in major league baseball, NCAA basketball and football, the NBA, and more.
A bolt of understanding zapped the business world first in 2006, when Tom Davenport co-authored a Harvard Business Review article about competing on analytics and then in 2007, when Harvard Business Press published “Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning,” the book he co-wrote with Jeanne G. Harris. Since then, the two works have gone onto bestseller status. Prof. Davenport has been named one of the world’s top three analysts of business and technology – listen to his thoughts about operations research, analytics, and his column in the current issue of Analytics in this special podcast.
Epidemiologists are not the only group working to prevent the outbreak of Swine Flu, or H1N1 Virus, in the northern hemisphere this fall. Experts in analytics and operations research have a special role. Hear operations researcher Sheldon Jacobson discuss his work making sure that vaccines and antidotes reach people speedily at this time of danger. Prof. Jacobson also discusses his work helping children receive combination vaccines that can prevent them from contracting dangerous diseases.
Wake County, North Carolina’s public schools aren’t facing the problems of decay found in some dying metropolitan areas; their problem is growth. The Wake County school body is 140,000 strong, attending 160 schools, and growing by 3,000-6,000 children a year. How does a growing school system reassign children from one school to another without angering parents? How does it comply with state and county mandates? And how can the school system demonstrate to voters that their decisions are fair? Hear how the Wake County Public School System collaborated with operations researchers at SAS to develop an equitable, easy-to-use solution that is improving by the day.
When Lawrence Wein, an expert in bioterror and former Editor-in-Chief of Operations Research, prepared to publish an important paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science on preventing contamination of America’s milk supply, the Bush Administration tried to block it. Now Prof. Wein’s recommendations on preventing attacks using botulism and anthrax, as well as recommendations about securing U.S. borders, are U.S. policy – as well as the subject of opinion pieces in The New York Times and other trusted editorial pages. Hear a special interview with Prof. Wein, who delivered the 2008 INFORMS Philip McCord Lecture, on homeland security and staying one step ahead of the next terrorist strike.
Analytics and operations research play a crucial role in bringing better healthcare to the poorest sections of the world – that’s an important lesson taught by The Clinton Foundation, an NGO that is making important strides in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa. Hear Justin Cohen of CSHOR, the foundation’s Center for Strategic HIV Operations Research, as he explains how measuring and analyzing bring a surprising boost to the fight against a stubborn challenge.
All the world’s a supply chain, says Prof. Mohan Sodhi, and the answers to the vexing questions about the Great Recession lie in an understanding of how today’s economy connects to the supply chain model. Building on his tour-de-force article in the Financial Times, Prof. Sodhi takes a sobering look at the world’s economic problems and some simple ways to keep companies from the brink.
Did you ever watch the way that patients, nurses, and doctors flow through the fast-moving doors of an emergency room? If you didn’t, you’re in good company – neither have most hospital administrators. Prof. Carter, an expert in the American and Canadian healthcare systems, explains the hidden costs in the North American healthcare and the ways that quantitative experts are modeling current hospital systems to shape future healthcare during the Obama Era.
How did they do it? Take a group of highly specialized computer wafer technicians and create one of the top computer chip manufacturers in the world? In this interview, Karl Kempf, an Intel Fellow and Director of Junision Engineering at Intel, explains how his expert group brought better Junision making to Intel – and helped a growing company blossom.