INFORMS Analytics Conference brings together 1,000 leading analytics professionals & industry experts (execs, analysts, managers, researchers, data scientists, etc.) to share ideas, network, & learn.

A common assumption in digital marketing is that individuals who are mindful of what’s trending on social media and propagate these trends, will be responsive to social media advertising and marketing, thus sharing branded messages with their network on a wide scale. As a result, firms increasingly try to mesh their brand or product with an emerging trend to get the attention of those who propagate these trends. The study will be published in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science.

A submission from the Pediatric Heart Network (PHN), a consortium of nine leading North American children’s hospitals, including Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, has been named as one of six 2018 finalists for the INFORMS Franz Edelman Award for Achievements in Advanced Analytics, Operations Research and Management Science. The Edelman Award is a prestigious honor given for achievement in the practice of advanced analytics and operations research. For more than four decades, winners have been recognized for revolutionary contributions that transform how we approach some of the world’s most complex problems.

For every two mobile apps released, one is a clone of an existing app. However, new research published in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research shows the success of the original app is not always adversely affected by the creation of clone apps. In fact, the study, which was conducted by Carnegie Mellon University researchers, found that whether the copycat app increases or decreases the number of downloads of the original is dependent upon the quality of the copy.

One out of two mobile apps released is a clone of an existing app. However, new research in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research shows the success of the original app is not always adversely affected by these clone apps. The study found that whether the copycat app increases or decreases the number of downloads of the original is dependent upon the quality of the copy.

Published in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science, a new study takes a look at how responsive “early trend propagators” Twitter users are to trend-related advertising. It’s not great news for advertisers.

If you were given datasets with genetic information and yields from trials of different experimental maize hybrids, along with information on soil conditions and recorded weather of a U.S. growing region, how will you predict the performance of these hybrids? And what if the genetic information dataset included an average of 12,000 genetic markers or unique DNA sequences to identify each hybrid? Those were the questions that the CIAT data analytics team needed to address as part of an international competition organized by agribusiness giant Syngenta in partnership with INFORMS, the largest international society of operations research, management science, and analytics practitioners.

INFORMS, the leading international association for professionals in Operations Research and Analytics, announced today that the organization is hosting the 2018 Government and Analytics Summit in Washington, D.C. on May 21.

In a recently published a study in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science entitled “Some Customers Would Rather Leave Without Saying Goodbye,” researchers examine “a hybrid of the standard contractual and non-contractual categorization of customer–firm relationships” looking at two different types of churners they denoted as “overt”, those who inform an organization of their departure from the consumer base and “silent”, the consumers who simply disengage without notice, or just fade away by halting their purchase behavior. 

Syngenta and the Analytics Society of INFORMS have announced the finalists for the 2018 Syngenta Crop Challenge in Analytics. Now in its third year, the competition—which is hosted by the Analytics Society of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), aims to address the challenge of achieving global food security by fostering cross-industry collaboration between agriculture and advanced analytics experts.

INFORMS member Lawrence Wein of Stanford University, discusses the many factors that have resulted in hundreds of thousands of backlogged sexual assault kits  languishing untested in police department storerooms across the U.S., resulting in continued assaults by perpetrators, cases that have passed the statute of limitation, and lack of closure for victims. Wein concludes that a large one-time investment in testing the nation's backlog and investigating the resulting hits will pay off, both from a cost-benefit analysis perspective, as well as for the victims of these assaults. 

Tune in to hear sports commentator Steve Russell discuss using analytics to improve the selection process for the NCAA March Madness with an author of the Interfaces article "Using Mathematical Programming to Select and Seed Teams for the NCAA Tournament," on the March 22nd broadcast of Sports Scene.

Steve Gaskin, Bob Klein and Gerry Katz of Applied Marketing Science, Inc. have been invited to be among the first of a network of “Ambassadors” who have the interest, resources and skills to translate academic papers published in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science - including "The Effect of Calorie Posting Regulation on Consumer Opinion" by Dinesh Puranam, Vishal Narayan and Vrinda Kadiyali - into short articles that have the potential to reach and impact practitioners.

The entire commercial real estate market can be a guessing game, where occupancies fluctuate along with real estate values. But what if you could tap the power of data science to better develop future real estate strategies? That is the focus of a special session at the INFORMS Business Analytics Conference in April.

 According to an upcoming INFORMS journal Organization Science article,“Gender Bias, Social Impact Framing, and Evaluation of Entrepreneurial Ventures,” investors link a startup’s social mission to the warmth of its founder. Women perceived as warm are also considered competent, as previous research has shown.

From better protecting the world economy against cyber crime, to detecting and preventing life threatening sepsis infections, to creating virtual environments to interact with artificial intelligence technology, analytics is driving the great discoveries and advancements of the future. And there is no greater opportunity to be part of driving that future than the 2018 INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research.

Florida A&M University’s College of Science and Technology will be hosting a STEM student seminar series geared toward preparing students for opportunities in math and science. Tasha R. Inniss, the director of education and industry outreach for INFORMS, will be a guest presenter and will be speaking about her experience in the mathematics industry.

New research has developed an automated approach for narrowing down and ranking the field of Division 1 college basketball teams from 351 to the 68 that would play in the annual "March Madness" basketball tournaments, watched by more than 80 million people each year. The study, "Using Mathematical Programming to Select and Seed Teams for the NCAA Tournament," will be published in the INFORMS journal Interfaces.

HQ Trivia, a daily trivia game show launched in August that broadcasts live on smartphones worldwide and offers thousands of dollars in cash prizes, combines the fundamentals of TV game shows with mobile technology that makes users feel like winning thousands of dollars is at their fingertips. HQ Insiders, a group of data scientists from Georgia, have collected and analyzed questions from the game since October, providing some interesting insight. 

The "Oscar love curse" is not only super random, but apparently a thing that experts (yes, experts) have studied. The INFORMS journal Organization Science once published a study, "The Real Oscar Curse: The Negative Consequences of Positive Status Shifts," and determined while there's little to no evidence of a "professional Oscar curse," there is proof of a "personal" Oscar curse - possibly hinting at the ramifications winning an Academy Award has on actors' relationships.