OR Overview
What is OR? "the effective use of scarce resources under dynamic and uncertain conditions,"
"used to analyze complex real-world systems, typically with the goal of improving or optimizing performance," and
"the professional disciplines that deal with the application of information technology for informed decision-making."
The tools of OR are statistics, simulation and optimazation. All of these tools are best suited for analyzing large data sets. For the most part, this means that OR can be used to solve problems the have available large amounts 0f data.
Links:
Wikipedia
Salaries (
entry level,
job listings)
Programs
INFORMS marketing campaign
Boston Globe Article
Compaines:
Optiant,
SmartOps,
RAND,
Military
OR and the defense industry
Example RAND Corp job description:
Operations researchers work with multi-disciplinary teams, advising policymakers and private sector clients on a diverse set of issues ranging from military logistics and manpower policy to the allocation of public health resources and the implementation of electric power deregulation. Such individuals use their quantitative skills to model and analyze current policy problems of national and international importance while continuing to develop better analytic and modeling techniques and build upon RAND's early OR successes. In conjunction with their research teams, they communicate their results directly to senior decision-makers, the analytic community, field-level personnel affecting change, and the public at large.
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