In the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections, the political parties in many states are working to redefine their congressional district maps to gain every possible edge. From California and Texas to Tennessee and Virginia, redistricting efforts have taken center stage. The Supreme Court has sanctioned partisan gerrymandering, and the system has evolved to one in which state legislature majorities get to determine who is most likely to fill those seats in Congress.
In short, gerrymandering has become a central feature of the system, not a bug. But what if we rethink the structure entirely?
Fake Hermès Birkin bags and other counterfeit luxury goods are popular not only with people on a budget, but also with those with deeper pockets, a new study suggests.
Researchers from the National University of Singapore analyzed millions of counterfeit purchases by American consumers from more than 24,000 U.S. zip codes on a major cross-border, e-commerce platform. They found that both lower- and higher-income individuals are “significantly more likely” to buy fake luxury items than middle-income consumers, according to a press release by INFORMS on Monday.
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What does preliminary information say about the crash of the passenger jet flying over the Sinai Peninsula? Was there an explosive device? INFORMS Treasurer Sheldon Jacobson, an aviation security expert, discusses the possibilities in this streaming video interview.
As the debate continues over whether college student-athletes should be paid for their on-field performances, a new study from Harvard Business School reveals just how much intercollegiate football and basketball programs contribute to a school’s bottom line.
The quantitative link between game day and payday is courtesy of Assistant Professor Doug J. Chung, who reviewed 117 schools with Division I football and basketball teams, matching athletic performance with revenue flow covering an 11-year period. The findings were jaw-dropping—winning just one more football game in a season, for example, could bump revenues by as much as $3 million for a high-powered program like Alabama or Michigan.
Chung details the correlation between wins on the field and wins for a school’s piggy bank in his paper, How Much Is a Win Worth? An Application to Intercollegiate Athletics, forthcoming in Management Science.
In a forthcoming paper in the journal Management Science, Harvard professor Doug Chung puts a dollar figure on the value of each additional win for big-time college football programs. He finds that each additional win creates a bump of about $3 million, through increases in revenue streams like ticket and merchandise sales, television contracts, and booster donations.
While responding to complaints on social media can help develop a rapport with customers, it can also trigger new complaints, according to a study from professors at the University of Maryland, Carnegie Mellon University and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, in China.
The study, which was published in Marketing Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), explains the side effect of customers coming to expect help and giving them more of a reason to speak up in the future.
“People complain on Twitter not just to vent their frustration,” said one researcher, Liye Ma. “They do that also in the hope of getting the company’s attention. Once they know the company is paying attention, they are more ready to complain the next time around.”
INFORMS has a definition that is commonly used and I think does a great job of answering the question: What is analytics? INFORMS defines analytics as the scientific process of transforming data into insights for the purpose of making better decisions. Analytics is always an action-driven approach. There is always a decision to be made when we look at doing analytics. Coming from a data science background and working with a lot of statisticians, data scientists love to analyze data just for the sake of analyzing it. However, it is important to ensure our analysis is driving business action. Ultimately, we want analytics to empower an organization's vision.
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