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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Jeff Cohen
Chief Strategy Officer
INFORMS
Catonsville, MD
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Practically, I was trained as an engineer. My degrees are all in operations research, not in economics. I gravitated to economics because I'm interested in how people coordinate and collaborate with each other. Economics studies all the ways people get along with each other.
CATONSVILLE, MD, June 9, 2015 - Did the cross-country drive that you planned using an online mapping service take twice as long as expected? In a new study published in the Articles in Advance section of Transportation Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), Microsoft researchers working on a project for Bing Maps explain how they developed the first routing engine that satisfies a large number of algorithmic requirements that overcome barriers to generating directions on multi-stage trips like coast-to-coast drives.
CATONSVILLE, MD, June 8, 2015 - The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), announced today that the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) has approved the INFORMS Certified Analytics Professional (CAP®) for educational benefits under 38 CFR 21.4268 of the Code of Federal Regulations, which covers the Montgomery GI Bill. Veterans and other eligible individuals can now seek VA reimbursement for fees associated with applying for INFORMS certification. Reimbursement covers the initial CAP fee and re-examination fees.
CATONSVILLE, MD, May 14, 2015 - Many television advertisers voice fears that distracted viewers – those increasingly frenetic multitaskers using smartphones, laptops and tablets while viewing TV – are becoming less receptive to advertisers’ messages. A new study published in the online Articles in Advance section of Marketing Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), refutes this conventional wisdom and concludes that the “second screen” puts a virtual store in every consumer’s pocket. Multitasking viewers now visit, browse, and even buy advertised products within moments of seeing a commercial.
Imagine an elite professional services firm with a high-performing, workaholic culture. Everyone is expected to turn on a dime to serve a client, travel at a moment’s notice, and be available pretty much every evening and weekend. It can make for a grueling work life, but at the highest levels of accounting, law, investment banking and consulting firms, it is just the way things are.
Except for one dirty little secret: Some of the people ostensibly turning in those 80- or 90-hour workweeks, particularly men, may just be faking it.
Many of them were, at least, at one elite consulting firm studied by Erin Reid, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. It’s impossible to know if what she learned at that unidentified consulting firm applies across the world of work more broadly. But her research, published in the academic journal Organization Science, offers a way to understand how the professional world differs between men and women, and some of the ways a hard-charging culture that emphasizes long hours above all can make some companies worse off.
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