DOES MORE DATA= MORE INFO?DOES MORE DATA= MORE INFO?

February 2009Volume 36 • Number 1

February 2009Volume 36 • Number 1

HOMELAND SECURITY: Can data mining really thwart terrorist plots?HOMELAND SECURITY: Can data mining really thwart terrorist plots?

AL S O:A L S O:

• Change We Can Blog In The Internet helped get Obama elected. Can it also help him govern?

• O.R. Credentialing Institute contemplates credentialing program for O.R. professionals

• Change We Can Blog In The Internet helped get Obama elected. Can it also help him govern?

• O.R. Credentialing Institute contemplates credentialing program for O.R. professionals

Biennial survey of statistical software highlightsgrowing list of challenges, capabilities.Biennial survey of statistical software highlightsgrowing list of challenges, capabilities.

OR/MS TODAY18 February 2009

Operations researchers have oftenprided themselves in their ability tomake manufacturing and supply chainswork more smoothly. Now, our sciencewith a thousand applications is showingus how our mistakes can cost us ourlives. In the November/December 2008issue of Operations Research, veterandecision scientist Ralph Keeney demon-strated that individuals’ poor decisionsincreasingly lead to premature death.Read below to learn how Newsweekdescribed his research.

Reporters are increasingly turning tooperations researchers for insights into thecurrent round of economic peril, as severalarticles below demonstrate.

Discoveries and Breakthroughs InsideScience (DBIS), the joint program thatallows researchers to communicate studieswith broad application to the public vialocal TV news, continues to offerINFORMS members the chance to bringtheir research to the television and comput-er screen. Want to share your importantresearch? Visit the INFORMS Newsroom atwww.informs.org and follow the easy stepsto explaining your work to DBIS editors.

Remember to share your research withthe INFORMS Communications Depart-ment. Contact INFORMS CommunicationsDirector Barry List at barry.list@informs.orgor 1-800-4INFORMs.

“With the dawn of a new and potential-ly difficult year upon us, many Americanswill swear that this is the year that they’ll eatbetter, exercise more or quit smoking. Ofcourse, most of us will fail to stick to thesehealthy resolutions. And, while we knowthat getting in shape is good for us, a newstudy shows the true cost of our tendencynot to make wise decisions about takingcare of ourselves. According to Duke Uni-versity’s Ralph Keeney, whose work was

published last month in the journal Opera-tions Research, America’s top killer isn’t can-cer or heart disease, or even smoking andovereating – it’s our inability to make smartchoices that leads us to engage in those andother self-destructive behaviors.

“ ‘Each year more than a million peopleneedlessly die because of their own person-al decisions,’ says Keeney, whose work givesnew meaning to the cliché we’re our ‘ownworst enemies.’ That means more than halfthe population will make a decision leadingto an early grave, he reports, including a full55 percent of people who die between theages of 15 and 64. Most alarming, that fig-ure has jumped fourfold since 1900, despitethe world becoming a safer place overallthanks to seat belts, smoking laws, healthfood and a host of other tools to help peo-ple stay inside the lines.”

– Newsweek, Jan. 2

“Conventional traffic engineeringassumes that given no increase in vehi-cles, more roads mean less congestion.So when planners in Seoul [Korea] toredown a six-lane highway a few years agoand replaced it with a five-mile-longpark, many transportation professionalswere surprised to learn that the city’straffic flow had actually improved,instead of worsening. ‘People werefreaking out,’ recalls Anna Nagurney, an[operations] researcher at theUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst,who studies computer and transporta-tion networks. ‘It was like an inverse ofBraess’ paradox.’

“The brainchild of mathematicianDietrich Braess of Ruhr UniversityBochum in Germany, the eponymousparadox unfolds as an abstraction: itstates that in a network in which all themoving entities rationally seek the mostefficient route, adding extra capacity can

actually reduce the network’s overall effi-ciency. The Seoul project inverts thisdynamic: closing a highway – that is,reducing network capacity – improves thesystem’s effectiveness.”

- Scientific American, February

2009

“By demonstrating that requirementsare driven by military necessity, even themost divisive political decisions can bedepoliticized...

“With a robust corps of operationalresearch analysts, the ideal setting for eval-uating and determining the private-sectorneeds of the military in future operationswould exist. Developing and maintainingthis corps of professionals ought to be aPentagon priority.”- Heritage Foundation, “Contracting

in Combat,” Jan. 13

“Looking for another good reason tokeep that New Year’s resolution to loseweight? How about saving the planet?Operations researchers Sheldon Jacobsonand Douglas King at the University of Illi-nois, Urbana-Champaign, calculate thattrimmer U.S. drivers would burn about3.8 billion liters less fuel per year. The esti-mate comes from combining driving datafrom the Department of Transportation,fuel-efficiency figures from the Environ-mental Protection Agency (EPA) and obe-sity numbers from the National Center forHealth Statistics. Cars and light trucks cur-rently burn around 0.0045 liters per kilo-gram of cargo every 100 km, EPA says.With Americans traveling 7.2 trillion kmper year, each extra half-kilo of flabrequires using an additional 150 millionliters of gas. The average adult is nearly 14kg overweight, teens around 3.6 kg, andchildren 1.4 kg. All this excess adds up toanywhere from 2.8 billion to 4.2 billionliters, the authors report …”

- Science, Jan. 2

“Nineteen years ago, Jennifer Courter setout on a career path that has since provid-ed her with a steady stream of lucrative,low-stress jobs. Now, her occupation –mathematician –- has landed at the topspot on a new study ranking the best andworst jobs in the U.S.

Poor Personal Choices &

Depoliticizing PoliticsB Y B A R R Y L I S T

O . R . I N T H E N E W S

INFORMS MOVING SPIRIT AWARDS Moving Spirit Award

Recipient: Hsing Luh (Taiwan Chapter)

Flora Moving Spirit Award

Recipient: Eric Wolman (Women in OR/MS)

JUDITH LIEBMANAWARDS

Recipients: Ankur Jain (Purdue University Student Chapter),Homarjun Agrahari (Texas A&M University Stu-dent Chapter), Vishnu Nanduri (University ofSouth Florida Student Chapter)

Vishnu Nanduri (middle) accepts award from Halit Uster

and Burcu Keskin.

Homarjun Agrahari (middle) accepts award from Halit

Uster and Burcu Keskin

Ankur Jain (middle) accepts award from Halit Uster and

Burcu Keskin.

Eric Wolman (right) accepts award from Ariela Sofer.

Student Chapter Annual Awards

Recognition: Outstanding participation and performance dur-ing the year of 2007

Recipients: Florida International University (Summa CumLaude); North Carolina State University, TexasA&M University, University of Massachusetts, Uni-versity of Virginia (Magna Cum Laude); ArizonaState University, Louisiana Tech University, Okla-homa State University, University of Illinois-Chica-go, University of Houston, University of SouthFlorida, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State Uni-versity (Cum Laude)

INFORM-ED Case Competition

Recipient: Guzin Bayraksan, University of Arizona

Recognized work: “Quantifying Operational Risk in Financial Institu-tions”

Finalists: Jeffrey Ohlmann and Justin Goodson, Universityof Iowa (“Hawkeye Football Programs”)

Halit Uster (fourth from right) and Burcu Keskin (far

right) present awards to representatives from Arizona

State University, Louisiana Tech University, Oklahoma

State University, University of Illinois-Chicago,

University of Houston, University of South Florida and

Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University.

Halit Uster (third from right) and Burcu Keskin (far

right) present award to representatives from North

Carolina State University, Texas A&M, University of

Massachusetts and University of Virginia.

Florida International University student (third from left)

accepts award from Halit Uster, Tracy Byrnes and Burcu

Keskin.

JUNIOR FACULTYINTEREST GROUP

JFIG Paper Competition Award

Recipient: Raghu Pasupathy, Virginia Polytechnic Institute &State University

Recognized work: “On Choosing Parameters in Retrospective-Approximation Algorithms for Stochastic RootFinding and Simulation Optimization”

Runners-up: Oguzhan Alagoz, University of Wisconsin-Madi-son, “Optimal Breast Biopsy Decision-MakingBased on Mammographic Features and Demo-graphic Factors”; Gad Allon and Achal Bassam-boo, Northwestern University, “We will be Rightwith You: Managing Customers with VaguePromises and Cheap Talk”

LOCATION ANALYSISChuck ReVelle Rising Star Award

Recipient: Zuo-Jun Max Shen, University of California, Berkeley

Zuo-Jun (Max) Shen (left) holds Rising Star Award

plaque.

(l-r): Raghu Raghavan (competition chair), Xin Chen,

Oghuzan Alagoz, Raghu Pasupathy, Gad Allon, Kartik

Hosanagar and Wei-yu Kevin Chiang.

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OR/MS TODAY54 February 2009