The Ambrosini Critique

App deadline: 12/15

Materials deadline: 1/10

Materials:

- 3 letters of rec

- transcripts

- gre

- sop

- optional: resume and writing sample

• mean salary – $60,890
• top paying industry – pharmaceuticals
• mean salary in that industry – $103,460 (wow!)
• Cities with highest concentration of these jobs – Huntsville, AL and D.C.
• Cities with highest pay – Bakersfield, CA and San Jose, CA

Message: go east for the jobs, come west for the money…

Highlights of OR related jobs from the BLS:

• there were about 62,000 OR jobs in 2002
• 4 out of 5 government OR jobs are in the military
• many private sector OR jobs are defense related
• demand growth for these jobs is expected to be below average over the next 10 years
• however, job prospects are good because supply is low and decreasing
• most employers are looking for advanced degrees (combo degrees… OR and Computer Science, for example… are most attractive)

Foresters use linear programming to optimize the production of lumber in timber ‘estates’. They generally have one of the following objectives when chosing which stands to harvest:

• Maximize discounted cash flow (i.e. profit over time)
• Minimize costs to a particular ‘utilization plant’ (lumber mill?)
• Maximize total production (in anticapation of a logging ban?)

LP is used to help decide when and where tree stands should be planted or harvested. It also helps to determine oppropriate ‘silviculture regimes’ (e.g. thinning, pruning, spacing, etc).

A quicky ’cause I wanna go to bed…

Current trends. Stochastic Programming Community.

George Dantzig, the author of the paper mentioned in the previous post, developed the simplex method for solving linear programs. The algorithm exploits the fact the optimum point in a system of linear inequalities is always on the edge and never in the interior. For example, the system 0

The first step in the method is to find the edge. Once you’re there, you walk your way around the edge until you find the optimal point.

It turns out that this method is very efficient in most useful cases, but it gets bogged down in some special cases (i.e. when there are lots of variables and lots of conditions, but each condition only deals with a few variables… aka sparse matrices). There is ongoing research to determine algorithms that are more efficient in those special cases.

OR started in WWII to solve a variety of logistical questions (e.g. are big convoys better than small ones?). Linear programming was formalized in 1947 and grew out of new interest in optimization. Computer technology was really taking off at this point, too, meaning the optimization problems were able to be computed (in a reasonable time frame). This article is a great overview of the history of linear programming. The author suggests stochastic programming (aka linear programming under uncertainty) is a ripe area for future research.

OR techniques are used to run ports and container ship routes. The most popular mechanism for moving stuff between continents, container shipping is growing in the double digits every year. OR helps to increase efficiency and safety by discovering the optimal organization of containers on the ship, allocating ships to port berths, and the layout of the temporary storage on the docks.

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

• MIT
• Berkeley
• CSU Fullerton Prof. Drezner
• OSU MS program

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.

So I took the summer off and now I’m back. I’m at HSU to take a Math degree… still working towards getting into a grad program.

My schedule is packed. I’m taking real analysis, math stat, linear algebra and German liturature (Marx, Freud, Kafka, Mann, Hesse, etc). I’m also a math tutor, I joined the math club and I particapate in the math colloquium. Last but not least, I’m doing some research for Prof. Haag regarding operational research and linear programming (he’s also my linear algebra teacher).

Lot’s of my posts will be regarding stuff I learn about OR and/or linear programming.