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 Mike Fry and Jeff Ohlmann, who edited a two-part issue of Interfaces devoted to sports analytics, and Chris Dellarocas on the pay per click paradox in online marketing. 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, O.R. in the news:

Describe, Predict and Prescribe: An Interview with Anne Robinson

Operations research is a very analytics-intensive profession. Has that always been known in the industry?

“Not really. People looking for analytics resources don’t necessarily associate that with operations research. We, the society, decided to take a more aggressive stance in saying that we do, in fact, do what people are looking for. Analytics magazine was an effort to introduce people to INFORMS and provide them with stories and ways to use analytics. “We now have more than 7,000 subscribers to the magazine.”
– SAS Knowledge Exchange, July 12

Putting Predictive Analytics to Work

Anne Robinson

“Convincing decision-makers to use the results can be as difficult as getting them to go along with the project in the first place, because the predictions may be the exact opposite of what their business intuition tells them, says Anne Robinson, president-elect for the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (Informs), the professional society for business analytics. ‘As you get more involved with analytics it becomes counter-intuitive,’ she says. ‘But it’s those deviations from what you’re doing that bring the rewards, because when the results are intuitive you find that most people are already doing them.’ ”
– Computerworld, June 27

Hospitals Pushing Patients Out Too Early

“Hospital patients, unready to go home, are being pushed out the door anyway.

“Pressure to meet financial obligations is pushing large hospitals to release patients too early, according to a pair of studies from University of Maryland [Management Science] Professor Bruce Golden. Patients who were discharged during hospitals’ busiest periods were 50 percent more likely to come back to the hospital within three days, the study found.

“One of the reasons for the rush to discharge patients: surgeons and hospitals operate on an incentive-driven model that pushes them to perform as many surgeries as possible, Golden said in a press release accompanying the findings.

“The hospital has to maintain revenue levels to meet its financial obligations. Surgeons are working to save lives and earn a livelihood. It’s what they do,” Golden said. ‘If the hospital says ‘sorry there are no beds available,’ there’s a lot of tension and pressure from both sides to keep things moving.’ ”
– Huffington Post, May 14

INFORMS VP Andy Boyd on a Career in O.R., Analytics

“Andy Boyd relishes cross-disciplinary work. Between earning an undergraduate degree at Oberlin and a Ph.D. from MIT’s Operations Research Center, he has studied mathematics, computer science, economics, philosophy and management studies. These diverse interests have helped Boyd thrive as a professor, as chief scientist of a successful software company, and in his avocation as a radio broadcaster.”
– MIT Technology Review, May/June 2012

Intel Edelman Work Saves Money

“Intel (INTC) is the largest chip company that still designs and manufactures its own products. Semiconductor plants cost about $5 billion each, and some of the equipment has to be ordered three years in advance. Guessing wrong about future demand is very expensive: Being overly optimistic can lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in idle machinery, while underestimating means billions in lost revenue. The chipmaker’s in-house [operations researcher], Karl Kempf, realized that trying to improve predictive models was no use. Forecasting is ‘the hardest problem in math,’ he says.

Karl Kempf

“So Kempf started writing equations. He designed a financial contract giving Intel the option to buy a specific piece of machinery at a specific time. The company pays its suppliers a modest amount of money upfront for the contract. If it ends up not needing the machine, the chipmaker loses the money or the supplier can find another buyer. But the contract ensures Intel has access to the equipment it needs when it’s needed.”
– Business Week, May 31

Queueing and rhubarb pies

“One important and enduring corner of the operations world – the one we’ll be exploring today – is queueing theory. Queueing theory is the study of lines. All kinds of lines. The lines at supermarket checkouts, the lines at tollbooths, the lines of people on hold waiting for someone, anyone, to pick up at the cable company’s 1-800 number.

“MIT professor Dick Larson is perhaps America’s foremost scholar of queueing theory. (This distinction has earned him the Bond-villain-ish nickname ‘Dr. Queue.’) According to Larson, queueing theory got its start about 100 years ago in Denmark, necessitated by a booming new technology: the telephone.”
– Slate, June 1

Employment Promising in O.R., Analytics

“Recruiters posted more than 18,000 online job ads for data analysts in January of 2012, growing 35 percent vs. 2011, according to WANTED Analytics™.

“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), the leading 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 vs. 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. All of these occupations experienced an increase in hiring demand when compared to January 2011.

“Metropolitan areas with the highest volume of job listings for in-depth analytical skills during January 2012 were New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston.”
– Star Global Tribune, May 28, 2012

Long Medical Waits Remain Hard to Cure

“Efforts in the medical world to reduce the amount of time patients spend waiting for appointments can have unintended consequences.

“If you measure how long patients coming off a waiting list have spent on that list, a hospital has little incentive, while under evaluation, to clear those who already have been waiting longer than average. As soon as they are cleared, the hospital’s numbers get worse.

“Measure the percentage of patients seen within, say, 48 hours, and those who can’t be seen in that time might instead find themselves waiting much longer, as earlier slots are saved for patients who call up later and can be slotted in the time frame, thus boosting a health provider’s numbers.

“Count how many people are on a waiting list for a specialist appointment or non-elective surgery, and the provider being evaluated might change the definition of how long patients have to wait to be included on the waiting list.”
– Wall Street Journal, May 25