Summer 2008

AT THIS WRITING (MID-JUNE), THE POLLS AND THE PUNDITS SAY THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IS TOO CLOSE TO CALL, A REAL HORSE RACE. To at least one analyst, however, the result was already pretty much a sure thing nearly two years ago: a win for the Democrats. His model deserves to be taken seriously, as it has correctly predicted the popular vote outcome of every U. S. Presidential election since 1984, including George H.W. Bush’s comeback from nearly 20 percent behind in the polls in 1988, and Al Gore’s narrow win in 2000.

To understand just how important the passenger railway system is to the 16.5 million people who live and work in the Netherlands, consider that more than half the citizens are frequent if not daily train passengers, and on certain corridors during rush hour, upward of 70 percent of the people who commute from one city to another do so by train. Thus in Holland, most people’s lives literally revolve around the train timetable, so when the trains start running late because demand starts overwhelming the system, it’s not only a big problem for the train operator, it’s a big problem for the Dutch people and the Dutch government.

• Peter Horner

The services industry continues to be a rapidly growing segment of many developed economies, including the U.S. economy [1, 2]. Although a significant portion of the services industry is focused on providing services to individuals (medical, insurance, legal, financial), the business services sector, in which one company provides service to another company, is also a rapidly growing segment [3, 4]. Examples include traditional consulting, design, technical support (typically for products), call center operations, IT implementation and IT outsourcing. New business models, based on improving efficiency through automation, aggregation of risk, economies of scale or reduction of capital assets, lead companies to outsource and in some cases off-shore business processes that do not provide differentiation in the marketplace.Transportation and warehousing, procurement, manufacturing, benefits management and back-office processes such as accounting are all now being provided as services. Business services are complex, and are typically purchased and managed by separate organizations within an enterprise.

• Brenda Dietrich
• Terry P. Harrison

ONE OF THE MOST FRUSTRATING things about a negotiation is that each party has private information that is central to a sound agreement, but it can at the same time be folly for either party to share that information directly with the other party. A simple example is a sales transaction. The seller should not start by telling his prospect the lowest price he is prepared to accept, nor should the buyer start by telling the seller the highest price he is prepared to pay. Clearly, if there is, in fact, room for a deal, whoever first conveys this information is conceding the entire room to the other party.

• John Kettelle

Many professional and casual users do explanatory and time series forecasting in medicine, business and academia. The forecast “hits” and “misses,” particularly the latter, sometimes make headlines. The large increase in college applications for the class of 2012, especially to prestigious universities, caught some provosts by surprise. Box office returns for “Juno” (on the high side) and “Leatherheads” and “Stop-Loss” (who under-performed) had repercussions in the movie industry. Doctors simultaneously promulgate and de-emphasize the charting of homocysteine levels to help predict the risk of coronary heart disease.Watching the approval numbers as a function of time for Clinton vs. Obama vs. McCain has become a mainstay of cable news networks. The trend curves for the price of oil, and finding explanatory models for said prices, are subjects of discussion in academia, on Wall Street and at many dinner tables.

• Jack Yurkiewicz

Like the young Mr. Smith in the classic movie, many graduates from the nation’s elite institutions go to Washington, D.C., with a dream and yearning to make a difference. In an election year where hope and change are pre-eminent themes, there is heightened awareness that many of the policies and programs that affect our quality of life necessarily go through our nation’s capital. Operations research and management science professionals are legion in the D.C. area, though they may not always be labeled as such (the generic “analysts” is much more common around the Beltway, sometimes qualified by systems, data, network, intelligence; not to mention “geeks” and “pointy-heads,” the politicos’ affectionate terms for anyone with a spreadsheet). They populate the national institutes, defense agencies, various mission agencies and myriad small and large companies (“consultants”) that keep the national government humming. By supplying the underlying intelligence, O.R. professionals play a key role in influencing public policy and informing decision-makers about the trade-offs inherent in all complex decisions.

• Hani Mahmassani