What Are the Odds? A Structured Approach for Unstructured Problems

Matthew D. Bailey - matt.bailey@bucknell.edu
School of Management, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania 17837

Michael J. Fry - mike.fry@uc.edu
Department of Quantitative Analysis and Operations Management, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221

Abstract

Decision makers are often faced with ill-defined problems such as determining the odds of unlikely occurrences. However, class settings often explicitly provide such values within problem sets or case studies. In this paper, we discuss an incident of a waitress at a bar being shown her own stolen identification. Using this problem, we motivate the use of mathematical modeling to decompose a problem to determine the odds of a rare event. Similar problem decomposition methods can be used in a variety of business and engineering problems.

Key words
probability decomposition; problem-solving methodology; ill-structured problems

History
Received: January 2009; accepted: December 2009.

Download the PDF
10.1287/ited.10.2.45

Supplementary Material

• ConsoleProductionExample.pptx
• Waitress_Ex_Calcs.xlsx

Citation Information
Bailey, M. D., Michael J. Fry. 2010. What Are the Odds? A Structured Approach for Unstructured Problems. INFORMS Trans. Ed. 10(2) 45-52. Available online at http://ite.pubs.informs.org/.

DOI: 10.1287/ited.1090.0043