Principles of Operations Research—8. The Burns Balance

This is the eighth in a series of articles on the principles of operations research. As the reader will note, these are somewhat different from similarly titled subjects in the usual textbooks.

The late Robert Burns, a radio comedian of a generation ago, was distinguished from the poet of the same name by the nickname “Bazooka”, from the home-made musical instrument which he played and made famous. Many of his stories centered around Arkansas, and one in particular described a technique for weighing hawgs which he had observed there: Select a perfectly symmetrical plank, and balance it across a sawhorse. Place the hawg on one end of the plank, and pile rocks carefully on the other end until it has just returned to an equilibrium position. Then guess the weight of the rocks.