One of the best parts of any conference is the people you meet, and my experience attending this year’s INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics was no exception. I sought out connections in health care, where I have not worked before, and learned a great deal from the experience of others. But sometimes the connections that make […]
Did you know that today (April 4, 2017) is Equal Pay Day? I didn’t either until I woke up to this stream of tweets: It’s simple. Women deserve to be paid equally for equal work. #EqualPayDay — Sen. Al Franken (@SenFranken) April 4, 2017 I have various degrees unrelated to my profession. I know women […]
At this morning’s keynote, Bill Groves, CDAO at Honeywell, said that people (executives, users of software tools, etc.) don’t want to hear what might happen, they want to hear what they should do. That is, they don’t typically want to hear the output of a predictive model — it’s 70% likely to rain — they want to […]
I’ve met with a few students in the last couple of days, and I always appreciate this chance to see where the world is heading. I’m impressed with the drive, passion, and courage of these young people. To cite drive and passion may be obvious, but any student who is in a graduate program focused […]
This is a guest post by Michael Zargham, who gave a sadly under-attended but content-rich talk this morning. I thought his framing was spot on around how to set up an analytics group to repeatedly and efficiently explore potential new “well-defined, solvable, impactful” problems, determine what should be built, do the research to actually get the […]
One of the meta things I’m most interested in at this conference is how a bunch of super-smart people with strong understanding of statistics handle coming to Las Vegas. Do we gamble, because we thing we’re smarter than the dealer? Do we avoid it, because we know the expected return from slot machines is something […]
With less than a year under my belt with INFORMS, I am still continually amazed at the impact analytics and operations research have on the world around us, and so often our members are leading the way! This couldn’t be more apparent than at this year’s INFORMS Business Analytics Conference, with so many professionals, students, […]
I arrived at INFORMS today a week into a new job, which means I’m wearing a different hat than I’ve worn at all previous Analytics conferences I’ve attended, and this change introduces a different perspective. I’ve taken off my “vendor” hat bearing SAS’ name and instead donned an industry hat, “health care,” for the University […]
I love a good one-liner as I feel that our own reference frame makes them valuable for each person in their own way. Conferences are a great place to gather them and I’m happy that I already gathered my first one- liner on day 1! AIMMS’s Gertjan de Lange stated that “It all starts with […]
This is my third time at the INFORMS Analytics conference, and my second time blogging the conference. (And my first time to Las Vegas!) I’ll be writing about the conference from the point of view of someone who does not have an OR/MS or even engineering background, as I did before. My first post from […]
I am excited about the INFORMS website and logo. I am the INFORMS VP of Marketing, Communication, and Outreach, and I’ve been working on both issues. The logo change started as a conversation with the Board in January 2016. If INFORMS were to choose a new logo, introducing it as part of the website redesign […]
I won’t get to the party until mid-morning tomorrow, but I’m already starting to pack for what is my favorite conference of the year. I’ve got the essentials: Business Cards, Suits, Sport Coats, Laptop, Paper and Pencils. I also have the ‘extras’ for Caesar’s Palace – hat, sunscreen, swimsuit. I’m really looking forward to seeing […]
