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OR is a discipline that applies advanced mathematical techniques to help institutions (private, public, non-profit) and individuals make better decisions.
OR
OR focuses on finding ways to allocate scarce resources to activities often in an uncertain environment in order to optimize one or more objectives. Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) - http://www.informs.org
How many cars to produce? What intensity of radiation to use in cancer treatment? How many outpatients to schedule every day? Whether to undertake a new project? Whether to invest in a particular stock? Which retirement plan to choose? How many medical service centers to open in a county? How many warehouses to open? What and how much to stock in these warehouses? How many nurses to employ? Which doctors to have on call? How to schedule flights? How to route road traffic / air traffic? Whether to use twofinger screening or ten-finger screening? How to schedule multiple projects? Which classes to take? Which PhD advisor to choose? When to replenish inventory?
QuickTime and a TIFF (LZW) decomp resso r are neede d to see this picture.
Not different from other quantitative fields of study Define the problem and gather data. Formulate a mathematical model to represent the problem Develop a computer-based procedure for deriving solutions to the model Test/refine the model Implement.
3.
4. 5.
What
are the different decision alternatives? What is the objective of interest? Are there multiple objectives? Do these objectives conflict with one another? What are the constraints? What are the sources of uncertainty?
2. Mathematical Model
After a problem description is available from the decision makers, we need to build a mathematical model of the problem
A
variables to represent attributes in the problem. parameters/constants that represent problem data. simplifying assumptions to make the solution/analysis
It
Since
is important to build a mathematical model that can be solved and yet represents the actual problem to a reasonable accuracy.
it is typically hard to assign appropriate values to the parameters, we often perform sensitivity analysis
How
3. Computer-based procedure for deriving solutions. In some cases, standardized software may be available to solve your model.
Applied
In
some cases, you may have to design new algorithms and write your own programs
Methodological
you)
research
Research, Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Mathematical Programming, Interfaces, INFORMS Journal on Computing, Mathematics of Operations Research, Healthcare Management Science
Programming, Non-linear Programming, Integer Programming, Dynamic Programming, Decision Analysis, Markov chains, Markov Decision Problems, Queueing Theory, Game Theory, Simulation, Network Optimization, Stochastic Programming
A Diet Problem
1.
decide the quantity of different food itmes to consume every day so as to meet the Minimum Daily Requirement (MDR) of several nutrients at minimum cost. What type of data do we need?
What are the different food items under consideration? Nutrient information and cost of food?
Carbs/unit Proteins/unit
Vitamins/unit
Cost/unit
5 7 4 2 2 1 0.6 0.35
8 15 3
Mathematical model. What variables do we need? Let XW and XR be the quantities of wheat and rye we consume respectively.
per unit WHEAT RYE CARB 5 7 PROTEIN 4 2 VITAMIN 2 1 COST 0.6 0.35
HC1 HC2
HC3
HC4
AVAILABILITY
W1
W2 W3
REQUIREMENT
46 4 35 2 99 5 80
513
416 682
654
690 388
867
791 685
75
125 100
65
70
85
You bike from home (A) to work (G) everyday along a network of bike routes shown in the picture with nodes and links. The travel time along these links is shown next to the links. Which route should you take to minimize total travel time?
Distributing Medical Teams to Counties (adapted from Hillier and Lieberman, 2005)
A
non-profit institution provides health related services to three counties. These services include medical care, health education and training. The institution has five medical teams and wants to decide how many (if any) medical teams to assign to each of these counties so as to maximize additional person-years of life. Decision variables - xj be the number of medical teams assigned to county j.
Can be solved the same way as the shortest path problem working backward choosing the option with the highest reward.
A Non-linear Problem
farmer wants to decide which crop to grow in order to maximize his expected income. He is considering four crops and feels that the weather this year is going to be either dry, moderate or damp. The farmer has estimated the probabilities for these events and the corresponding net income.
a few toy examples from Operations Research, which takes a systematic mathematical approach to decision making. There is a lot more out there and is covered in classes such as INDE 410, 411, 412, 513, 599 etc.
References
Hillier,
F. and Lieberman, G., Introduction to Operations Research, McGraw Hill, 8th edition, 2005. Denardo, E., Dynamic Programming: Models and Applications, PrenticeHall, 1982.