At this writing, just after the conventions, 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.
Volume 35, Number 6, December 2008
FEATURE ARTICLES
DIGITAL EDITION
DEPARTMENTS 
Inside Story
When the Going Gets Tough
INFORMS President-Elect Don Kleinmuntz and U.S. PresidentElect Barack Obama have more than a few things in common as they prepare to take over the reins of their respective “organizations”in January. For example, they both have ambitious agendas and extensive todo lists, they both have a commanding presence and give a great talk, and they both exhibit confidence, calm and above all else, optimism, as they look to the future.
President's Desk
Strategic Planning Committee Eyes New Initiatives
The annual meeting is behind us (with more than 4,600 attendees!) and my term as INFORMS president is coming to an end, as marked by this final column of my presidency. On Jan. 1, 2009, Don Kleinmuntz will commence his term as president, and I will move to the position of past-president, a role served this year by Brenda Dietrich. Our team of three presidents have worked together this year to ensure a focus within INFORMS on the present and the future, with an eye to the past to inform our actions. A key activity of the “three presidents” has been to engage the INFORMS Strategic Planning Committee (SPC), chaired by Brenda. Brenda, Don and I – all members of the SPC – are grateful for the commitment of time and the generation of ideas provided by the remaining members of the committee, including Ken Chelst, Pinar Keskinocak, Erica Klampfl, Radhika Kulkarni, Matt Saltzman, Jim Dyer, Glenn Wegryn, Greg Parnell and Mark Doherty.
Issues in Education
Securing O.R.'s Future through Undergraduate Research
Course scheduling, vaccine stockpiling and mass prophylaxis, malaria prevention in Africa. What do these topics have in common? These were the research topics presented by six undergraduates during the Undergraduate Research Showcase at the recent INFORMS annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. The showcase, sponsored by INFORM-ED, highlighted the impressive modeling and analysis done by some of our undergraduate students (O.R., I.E. and math majors) on important problems. In this article, I hope to demonstrate the critical role undergraduate research can play in shaping the future of our profession by addressing some “what’s,” “why’s” and “how’s”of undergraduate research.
INFORMS in the News
Videoconferencing, Anthrax and Other Perils
The 2008 INFORMS Annual Meeting was notable for many reasons, including a guest appearance by Business Week writer Stephen Baker, who signed nearly 100 copies of his new book “The Numerati” [for more on Baker and his book, see pages 12, 30 and 34]. Operations researchers took satisfaction in knowing that a journalist with a major business magazine showed appreciation for numbers crunchers like us in a book that has won praise in The Wall Street Journal and mention in the “New and Noteworthy” section of The New York Times Book Review. Thanks, Steve, for giving praise where it has long been due.
Was It Something I Said
Author Eyes us with Optimism, Concern
I subscribe to The Week [1], a publication that strives to aggregate information from a vast range of sources – including domestic and foreign newspapers, Web sites and blogs – into short summaries of what has been in the news for each week, addressing an extraordinarily broad range of topics, including business, politics, real estate, entertainment, editorials and the arts.
Forum
Predictions, Prophesy and Promises
Last month, the United States elected Senator Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States. This election turned out to be the least contentious since the overwhelming victory of President Clinton over Senator Dole in 1996. Following the 2000 election, we discussed looking at ways to predict the outcome of the presidential election.
PuzzlOR
Five-by-Five Poker
Five-by-five poker is a solitaire poker variant in which a player arranges 25 cards in a five-by-five grid. Each column and each row in the grid represents a poker hand, making 10 hands in total. The object of the puzzle is to rearrange the cards to maximize the summed points from each hand. Hands are awarded points based on the accompanying table:
Roundtable Profile
O.R. at General Electric Global Research Center
GENERAL ELECTRIC GLOBAL RESEARCH CENTER (GEGR) HAS BEEN A CORNERSTONE OF GE TECHNOLOGY FOR MORE THAN 100 YEARS. It is one of the world’s largest and most diverse industrial research labs with more than 2,500 researchers located at four multi-disciplinary facilities. Headquartered in Niskayuna, N.Y., GEGR has facilities in Bangalore, India; Shanghai, China; and Munich, Germany. GEGR delivers innovative, enabling technologies to GE’s businesses that revolutionize the markets they serve. Examples of major breakthroughs over GEGR’s history include the ductile tungsten that enabled the commercial incandescent lamp, portable medical X-ray, the first commercial U.S. jet engine, Lexan polycarbonate, man-made diamonds, MRI and digital X-ray. Home to two Nobel Prize winners, GEGR’s mandate is to identify and perform the enabling R&D for the next-generationplus of GE’s products and services. A majority of the projects at GEGR are funded directly by GE’s businesses .
ORacle
Marshall McLuhan’s Parable
The group in the office was usually productive, but not much was getting done this pleasant fall morning. The lively conversation centered on one topic: the presidential election, decided a few days before.