The Easy Chair: Observation and Experimentation

If operations research and the management sciences are to represent reality adequately, they must observe its phenomena carefully; but observation and experimentation are not emphasized in the MS/OR literature — nor in the training of its workers — as heavily as early experience would lead one to expect. Some of my experiences with analyses for the US Air Force in the early '50s support my belief that observation and experimentation should be more heavily stressed in MS/OR than they are.