O.R. IN THE NEWS

Complied by Barry List

The INFORMS archive of podcasts continues to offer provocative conversation with leading O.R. practitioners and thinkers. It includes recent interviews with Renée Adams and Patricia Funk on breaking the glass ceiling, Operations Research Editor-in-Chief Stefanos Zenios on patient decision-making tools and Atanu Basu on analytics and the future of healthcare. Visit www.scienceofbetter.org and www.informs.org, to download the latest selections.

Remember to share your news making research with the INFORMS Communications Department. Contact INFORMS Communications Director Barry List at barry.list@informs.org or 1-800-4INFORMs.

And now, excerpts from O.R. in the news:

ManSci take on drug shortages

“Low prices induce drug makers to exit various markets, or at least to reallocate their manufacturing capacity toward more profitable, patented pharmaceuticals. Low prices also tend to eliminate the rationale for investments in better manufacturing technologies and processes, as shown in my 2009 study in the Journal of Management Science. Government price controls on generic drugs limit the manufacturers’ margin to 6 percent in many cases.”

Awi Federgruen, Wall Street Journal, March 1

Personalities of female business leaders

“To answer the question of whether male and female business leaders differed on important personality factors, two researchers surveyed more than 600 Swiss CEOs and board members in 2005...

“The study, by Renée B. Adams and Patricia Funk, appears in the February issue of Management Science.”

– Wall Street Journal, Feb. 28

Hiring demand reflects need for analytical skills

“During January 2012, more than 18,000 job ads were posted online that required data analysis skills, according to WANTED Analytics™ (http://www.wantedanalytics.com), a source of real-time business intelligence for the talent marketplace. With the amount of data generated by businesses growing every year, hiring demand for employees to analyze and utilize this information is increasing across business functions. Overall, the volume of job ads in January 2012 increased 35 percent compared to January 2011 and about 75 percent versus the same month in 2010.

“Computer Systems Analysts, Management Analysts and Market Research Analysts were the three occupations that most commonly required this critical skill set. Computer Systems Analysts saw the most job ads with data analysis requirements – more than 3,600 jobs were posted online during January at a 45 percent year-over-year increase. Other positions with high-demand for analytical skills were Software Engineers, Industrial Engineers and Operations Research Analysts.”

– PRWeb, Feb. 22

How an analytics guru knows if you’re pregnant

“Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: ‘If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn’t want us to know, can you do that?’

“Pole has a master’s degree in statistics and another in economics, and has been obsessed with the intersection of data and human behavior most of his life. His parents were teachers in North Dakota, and while other kids were going to 4-H, Pole was doing algebra and writing computer programs. ‘The stereotype of a math nerd is true,’ he told me when I spoke with him last year. ‘I kind of like going out and evangelizing analytics.’ ”

– New York Times Magazine, Feb. 16

Big Data bigger patterns

“It’s not just about Big Data. For the big players in enterprise technology algorithms, it’s about finding big patterns beyond the data itself.

– New York Times, Feb. 15

Prescription drugs … and gun control

“Prescription drug abuse takes many forms. At a minimum one must distinguish between individuals who abuse substances their own doctors prescribe, as opposed to those who obtain the drugs in other ways...”

–INFORMS member Jonathan Caulkins, New York Times, Feb. 15

The Age of Big Data

“GOOD with numbers? Fascinated by data? The sound you hear is opportunity knocking.”

– New York Times, Feb. 12

O.R. fighting infectious diseases in developing countries

“Operational research in low-income countries has a key role in filling the gap between what we know from research and what we do with that knowledge – the so-called know/do gap, or implementation gap. Planned research that does not tangibly affect policies and practices is ineffective and wasteful, especially in settings where resources are scarce and disease burden is high. Clear parameters are urgently needed to measure and judge the success of operational research. We define operational research and its relation with policy and practice, identify why operational research might fail to affect policy and practice, and offer possible solutions to address these shortcomings. We also propose measures of success for operational research. Adoption and use of these measures could help to ensure that operational research better changes policy and practice and improves health-care delivery and disease programmes.”

– The Lancet, Feb. 9

Analytics, BI No. 1 for CIOs

“CIOs increasingly see technologies such as analytics/business intelligence, mobility, cloud and social in combination rather than isolation to address business priorities.”

– Gartner Report, Jan. 18