We are drowning in numbers, and we no longer understand what they mean. Every day, headlines bombard us with figures meant to inform: billions in spending, trillions in debt, percentages signaling growth or decline. But for most of us, these numbers blur together. They register as “large” or “small,” but almost never as real. And that is more than a math problem. It is a civic one.
INFORMS has awarded Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) its 2026 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Advanced Analytics, Operations Research and Management Science, for reengineering how global cloud infrastructure is planned and delivered, applying advanced analytics and AI to orchestrate complex fulfillment decisions across its rapidly expanding data center network.
In the rush to adopt artificial intelligence, many employers are now requiring that employees use AI tools. As you’re using AI, be intentional and selective. It’s critical that you know yourself. Research published in Management Science found that AI is most valuable for people who understand their own abilities and limitations. Assess yourself, so you can factor this into your process for incorporating AI into your work.
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The smartphones carried in so many pockets and purses could play a key role in keeping COVID-19 under control as the nation cautiously reopens the economy.
Lessons learned from failures during COVID-19 include not relying on a single supplier overseas and finding ones that are closer to their customers, experts say.
Coronavirus has sown chaos in food supply chains in a matter of weeks as consumers avoided restaurants and turned to grocery stores for a greater share of food purchases. Now, the companies that process and distribute food are figuring out how to catch up.
We talk to doctors and residents in top-ranked nations to understand how they’re managing the virus, and what continued challenges lie ahead for residents.
In research that I undertook with my colleagues from Yale University and the University of Texas, we took a deep dive into the decision making of the World Health Organization (WHO) during the Ebola outbreak of 2014–2016. We wanted to compare and contrast its actions against those of Doctors Without Borders over the same period to determine when public health officials should raise the alarm about a global health emergency. Even though the clinical characteristics of the coronavirus are different from those of Ebola, the way public health authorities currently approach and frame the problem of controlling the current epidemic seem quite similar. This should concern us.
OR/MS Today is the INFORMS member magazine that shares the latest research and best practices in operations research, analytics and the management sciences.
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Analytics magazine showcases articles and research reports based on big data, AI, machine learning, data analytics and other new-age technologies.
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