Slashdot Mirror

Yes, this one https://yro.slashdot.org/story...

From this article:

The researchers partnered with an unnamed internet-service provider -- in a region they chose not to disclose -- to offer customers who were already prone to piracy an on-demand package for free for 45 days. About 10,000 households participated in the study, and about half were given the free service. ... according to research published in Management Science (paywall) last month

And from the one I just linked:

The researchers used a piracy-tracking firm to get a sample of thousands of BitTorrent pirates at the associated ISP. Half of them were offered a free 45-day subscription to a premium TV and movies package, allowing them to watch popular content on demand.

And that one links to https://pubsonline.informs.org... which has a "Management Science" banner on it.

TIL "Operations Research" is known as "Operational Research" in the U.K.

Very few medical conditions are caused purely by lifestyle choices...

You'll need to show a little proof here.

On the other hand, "Personal decisions are the leading cause of death", Dr. Ralph L. Keeney of Duke University, 2008
http://orforum.blog.informs.org/files/2009/01/keeney.pdf

A discussion of his paper, with a variety of points of view, at the Operations Research Forum
http://orforum.blog.informs.org/2009/01/06/personal-decisions-are-the-leading-cause-of-death/

And for the rest of us, the Wired article on his paper is here
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-10/ff_smartlist_keeney

Very few medical conditions are caused purely by lifestyle choices...

You'll need to show a little proof here.

On the other hand, "Personal decisions are the leading cause of death", Dr. Ralph L. Keeney of Duke University, 2008
http://orforum.blog.informs.org/files/2009/01/keeney.pdf

A discussion of his paper, with a variety of points of view, at the Operations Research Forum
http://orforum.blog.informs.org/2009/01/06/personal-decisions-are-the-leading-cause-of-death/

And for the rest of us, the Wired article on his paper is here
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-10/ff_smartlist_keeney

Obscure, like programming traffic lights?

These guys already figured this out several years ago. (Sorry, I couldn't find a non-subscription link.)

During the pilgrimages to Mecca, one of the things that people are supposed to do is go into a large stadium and cast rocks at three pillars. Zillions of people attend this event, and there have been numerous trampling deaths at the entrance to the stadium. These guys showed that having obstructions near the entrance improves traffic flow, and so they recommended to officials in Mecca to install such obstacles there, resulting in far fewer trampling deaths near the entrance. Other means of traffic calming were used to mitigate deaths elsewhere in the stadium.

Your not adding anything to the conversation

"You're". Not: "your".

See, something has been added. Your grammar was frequently atrocious in your earlier screeds, but I decided to give you a free pass for those ones. You really should concentrate on getting the basics of English down, because using it poorly reflects badly on your message, no matter what you are saying. Or trying to say.

I addressed the merits of your case earlier, with regard to the physical location of the plant used to operate the gaming, versus the residence of the gamers. You argued that the WTO had no remit in this case. The WTO panel disagreed, and in accepting arbitration, the US *and* Antigua both accepted remit. You are, in effect, second guessing the legal and political teams from two countries as well as an international panel of jurists. As with idiosyncratic stock picking, there is a very, very small probability of you being correct in this instance, versus a very high probability of you not being correct in this case. I have read your bloggish/fisking-style arguments againt the WTO decision and they are unconvincing and merely reiterate or restate many of the initial arguments of the US deposition in the first round of hearings. These arguments were judged at the time to be of insufficient merit to prevent the arbitration from proceeding. Your stubborn refusal to recognise that a legally constituted body delegated to come to a resolution of this difficult problem bespeaks a cognitive difficulty in accepting wisdom.

Sometimes, you just have to admit that you are wrong. The problem is that when your intellectual capabilities constrain you from recognising the domain borders of your inexpertise, there is a high probability that you will overestimate your capabilities.

You are to be commended for your desire to keep your mathematical and analytical skills in good working order. The world needs more people with your attitude.

One way of starting to learn something is to be motivated by its potential to help you or give you new insights into today's world. While I always liked math, it wasn't until I found some good, practical applications that I decided to build a career around it.

What turned the corner to me was the field of Operations Research, which applies mathematics and computing to real-world decision problems. Problems like work scheduling, vehicle routing, staff planning, production and inventory management, queueing, quality control, and general optimization. The basic approach is to identify the underlying problem, build a decision model, solve the mathematical model, and implement the results. Check into such classic models as linear programming, the transportation problem, integer programming, network flows, queueing theory, and Monte Carlo simulation.

Others can explain this better, and a good place to start is:

• http://www.scienceofbetter.org/

• http://www.hsor.org/ - O.R. for high school students
  
• http://www.informs.org/ - the professional O.R. society, INFORMS

In O.R., mathematics underlies everything, but is always applied to a wide variety of real problems. Without the applications, the field would simply be applied mathematics or statistics. By combining the two, the problems become not only interesting, but relevant and, sometimes, quite profitable.

Tracking / measuring productivity can be difficult or even counter-productive for many reasons. Some of them being...
      1) the "bean counters" incorrectly define productivity - for organizations, productivity needs to be directly related to producing value for the organization; however, even the definition of "value" will change over time for an organization; also production of value can also refer to prevention of loss, production support, and more.
      2) the act of tracking / measuring can sometimes consume large amounts of time, this can actually lower productivity
      3) people sometimes track / measure secondary or even non-contibuting metrics - metrics that don't actually impact or have very little impact on productivity; this is extremely dangerous since it can lead companies to change behaviors / processes to improve the faulty metrics

There's a company called Ocean of One that actually specializes in this type of work. Even though they sell software related to this field, they're actually more of an R&D organization. I've read a number of research papers and other publications from these guys on the subject that are very helpful. You can also find good information related to this subject from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

At least in my field (operations research / math / cs / machine intelligence) the journals (e.g., INFORMS: http://templates.pubs.informs.org/) provide not only formatting guidelines but template and Latex style files. In that case it's just a matter of downloading the style file, sticking it in the folder with the latex source, and recompiling it. Most even provide instructions in case your run into trouble.

The reason Americans have this attitude is because of space and population density. Those that live in areas with a great deal of open space and are more sparsely populated tend to think that the world has infinite resources and nothing we do can blemish it. People who live in more densely populated environments are more painfully aware of how we affect the environment and also care more about preserving that shared environment. Thats why we see most liberals in the west and the north-east. http://ite.pubs.informs.org/submissions/example/im ages/la1.gif
The population density of europe is much higher than that of the US so people care more about how they affect others as well.
http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/Basic_Informatio n/population_density/maps/europe.html

On top of that, a more dense population usally also means a better education infrastructure. Historically, the conservative areas of the US have had very poor schools as compared to the liberal areas. In other words, many are just ignorant.

However, studying organizational behavior tells us that once a group (such as the U.S.) takes a course of action, the people in the group tend to try and convince themselves that it was the right decision, and will deliberately overlook facts in order to make themselves feel better about it. This exercise is very interesting.

You can build a consumer vehicle prototype for around $100K.

If you have a solid Technology background (i.e., a 4-year Engineering/Science BS), I would suggest you consider pursuing a degree in Operations Research (OR). OR is the "hard technology" side of Management. You would be expected to use quantitative techniques (analysis, modeling, simulation, etc.) to gain insight and solve problems in business, government, military, etc.
Some good sites to check out include:
Michael Trick's Operations Research Page
Institute for Operations Research and Management Science