INFORMS Open Forum

  • 1.  Fun Post: Time Travel

    Posted 12-05-2024 12:15

    In honor of Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day on December 8th, (who knew there was such a thing?) would you prefer to travel to the past or to the future? If to the past, what time frame and why? Look forward to reading your responses!



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    Jill Capello
    Membership Associate
    INFORMS
    Catonsville MD
    jcapello@informs.org
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  • 2.  RE: Fun Post: Time Travel

    Posted 12-06-2024 11:56
    Edited by Xiaonan Shang 12-06-2024 11:56

    This is fun!

    I would love to travel back to Tang Dynasty (608-907AD) since that was the golden age for art, culture, economic etc. 

    And guess what?! There was the concept of "Big Data" back then already! Even though it's not called "Big Data" at that point. 

    If you're interested -- there's a show called "the Longest Day in Chang'an" that shows how they used the data and analytical methods back then. 

    I really want to see the life and art and "advantage" methods being used at that time. 



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    Xiaonan Shang
    Manager, Data Analytics
    Global Holdings LLC
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  • 3.  RE: Fun Post: Time Travel

    Posted 12-06-2024 12:47
    Dear Jill, 
     
    Thank you very much for another very useful and ultimately decisive contribution to our INFORMS discussion forum!
     
    On the one hand, as is so often the case, this post of yours is very stimulating and inspiring, allowing us to relax and even make us smile, yes, exercise our laughing muscles.
     
    On the other hand, I would like to announce at this point that I am in an advanced phase of writing my book "Times and Lives", what sounds like physics and cosmology, which it actually is, and represents a relatively closed "theory of everything", of the most distant as well as the very nearest, the very greatest as well as the very smallest, whether outside of us or within us, but not for its own sake, but rather with and for people and the whole creation. 
     
    I can reveal that surprisingly OR-MS plays a very important role here. In fact, I have chosen numerous examples and illustrations, metaphors and allegories, parables and short stories with connections to OR-MS, for example from literature and music, arts and science, good times and bad times, everyday life situations and the possible, consciousness and unconscious, travel in generalized space-time. 
     
    As so often, I would like to say a big thank you to the INFORMS team for making this new discussion and thread possible and hosting it so loyally and personably.
     
    With best wishes,
    sincere regards,
    Willi (Gerhard-Wilhelm Weber)


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    Gerhard-Wilhelm Weber
    Professor
    Poznan University of Technology
    Poznan
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  • 4.  RE: Fun Post: Time Travel

    Posted 12-06-2024 20:27

    Let's do a professional and a fun one (both past but within my lifetime). 

    1963 was a huge year for computer simulation (my field): First book by KD Tocher, first influential language GPSS and publication of Conway's "Some Tactical Problems in Digital Simulation" that set the direction of research for decades. I was too young to know any of this.

     In 1984 I was in the Olympic Stadium in LA when American Joan Benoit won the first women's Olympic marathon; I would like to experience that thrill again.



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    Barry Nelson
    Walter P. Murphy Professor
    Northwestern University
    Evanston IL
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  • 5.  RE: Fun Post: Time Travel

    Posted 12-07-2024 13:33
    Edited by Duncan Klett 12-08-2024 12:13

    The Past would be interesting - probably learn about a lot of things not available that we now take for granted.

    The Future would be fascinating, possibly frightening.  What happens to the things we have been spending our life developing?  What global, or even extra-terrestrial, events have changed how lives have changed?

    On balance, being a curious guy, I would go to the Future...



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    Duncan Klett
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  • 6.  RE: Fun Post: Time Travel

    Posted 12-12-2024 09:15

    I would go back to the famous 1939 class at UC Berkeley in which professor Jerzy Neyman wrote two unsolved statistics problems on the blackboard.  George Dantzig, then a graduate student, arrived late and assumed that the problems were a homework assignment.  The subsequent solving of these two problems laid a riveting foundation for operations research. 



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    Keith Willoughby
    Professor
    University of Saskatchewan
    Saskatoon SK
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  • 7.  RE: Fun Post: Time Travel

    Posted 12-13-2024 23:27

    Dear Jill Capello,

    During my time as a graduate student in Industrial and Systems Engineering at Penn State University (1978–1980), I developed a heuristic algorithm for the flow-shop scheduling problem as part of my research. My work was supervised by Professors Emory E. Enscore (first supervisor) and Inyong Ham (second supervisor).

    Thanks to the dedicated efforts of Professor Enscore, a paper describing the algorithm was published:

    A heuristic algorithm for the m-machine, n-job flow-shop sequencing problem

    M Nawaz, EE Enscore Jr, I Ham - Omega, 1983 - Elsevier

    This paper remains highly influential in the scheduling field and continues to receive more than 120 Scopus citations annually, even 41 years after its publication.

    In the Operations Research and Management Science (OR/MS) community, the algorithm is widely known as the NEH algorithm, named after its authors: Nawaz, Enscore, and Ham. After Johnson's Rule, the NEH heuristic is one of the most renowned algorithms in the flow-shop scheduling. Over the years, numerous adaptations of the NEH algorithm have been created to address not only flow-shop scheduling problems but also a wide range of other issues. The algorithm itself has evolved into a research topic.

    Muhammad Nawaz



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    Muhammad Nawaz
    Doncaster East VIC
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