Analytics is a hot topic for retailers. Several presentations during this conference returned to this theme and is a huge positive sign for OR in this industry. However, how to apply science smartly to the tons of sales data being collected (and retailers collect this like holy dust nowadays) and to automate robust decision making is another question altogether - 99% of the retailers do not have the right skill sets to pull this off. It is not easy building this system in-house from the ground up, and companies like Oracle Retail can do this better and faster, allowing retailers to focus on their core business areas. Few if any, were even aware of 'OR' (is OR by any name still OR ?). On the other hand, the general consensus was that revenue and supply chain optimization is a must to compete in this tough economy (honey, i shrunk the margins). A panel of investment experts with representatives from major financial institutions, both government and private, felt that in addition to top-line growth, being able to optimize the use of scarce resources to achieve operational excellence is one of the keys for survival in this new economy.
The level of hype surrounding the virtual region that lies at the intersection of social networking and mobile technology is staggering with numbers going off the charts (literally). How can OR grab a share of the science pie here? For example, I liked the way Wet Seal has been innovating and surely this area is going to see new and innovative applications being developed soon. Experts from Google and other tech-heavy companies weighed in on this as well and all signs point to an interesting retail shopping experience in the near future. Get your scan-ready smart-phone out and interactively and collaboratively shop in a real store with your virtual friends. The line between brick-and-mortar stores and the virtual shopping world is rapidly blurring.
On a side note, it was great visiting Chicago after a few years. The single most beautiful landmark there is the dazzling Swaminarayan Mandir (loosely translates to 'temple') in Bartlett. Hand-sculpted from Italian Marble and Turkish limestone by thousands of Indian craftsman, this Mandir does not rely on machine-tools and does not contain a single metal part or fastener in keeping with the sacred Indian tradition of Mandir architecture. Interlocking stones are used throughout, with individual stones weighing between a few grams to 5.2 tons. Pretty amazing. It is open to the public and is a must-see for visitors. The gardens and fountains surrounding the temple are well-maintained and pleasing to the eye. Inside the complex, smartly designed fiber-optic lighting and hidden underground heating add an invisible high-tech layer to this construction, and combines with the silence that must be observed within the ethereal sanctum-sanctorum to create a deeply personal and spiritual experience. The food served in the community center in the basement is excellent, and is strictly vegetarian, of course.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Oracle Cross-talk, June 22-24, Chicago - strong OR presence
Operations Research at Oracle Retail will have a strong presence in this year's edition of Oracle Cross-talk, to held next week between June 22-24 in Chicago, where (paraphrasing the press release) " ... retail executives and retail industry experts from around the world will share insights, demonstrate innovations and better understand the role of technology in new retail business strategies...".
There are a few analytics-heavy sessions planned, and being an attendee as well as an 'optimization facilitator' this time, I hope to spread the OR gospel and gain insight into the progress of OR-usage in this industry over the last 5 years, the level of user acceptance, and value added.
There are a few analytics-heavy sessions planned, and being an attendee as well as an 'optimization facilitator' this time, I hope to spread the OR gospel and gain insight into the progress of OR-usage in this industry over the last 5 years, the level of user acceptance, and value added.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
The Reverse What-if: more hard-won insight into OR practice
The real fun in O.R practice is when your optimization product (say a recommendation system) is evaluated by it's first customer. Usually this is the point where you throw away the last 6 months of your textbook work and build something that your customer can actually use rather than what you wanted to build.
If you are in the business of providing software-as-a-service, you can do several iterations with a customer and that practice is more forgiving, but i am learning the hard way that building an air-tight OR product and then handing it off to a customer is mighty hard and you only have one or maybe two chances to get it right.
(note: some dramatic license exercised for illustrative purposes)
Today's tab focuses on the 'what-if', the practice of walking a customer thru a choreographed sequence of optimization scenarios. An obvious choice is to start with a somewhat unconstrained model, say, only having boxed variables, and then show the user or the consultant how the solution changes as you throw in, one by one, all those beautiful constraints your system can handle. At the end of this process, if everything goes well, you end up with a real and optimized solution that business can use and will save them many $$.
Unfortunately, this approach of "increased complexity" rarely works. The procedure described above is nice if you are trying to teach a student about OR. The average business user doesn't really care about this. He/She probably understands real-life solutions much better than you. She/we wants your system to work well and maybe help get a bonus at the end of the fiscal year. In fact, you are better of looking at its dual, the reverse-what if.
The reverse what-if, as you would guess, starts with the best approximation of the customer's reality and then you navigate from there. Otherwise, the customer has little patience for all the n-1 steps in the 'straight' what-if which represent imaginary solutions he doesn't care about. The n'th step brought him to reality, which he already understands better than you, so you haven't helped him much.
The reverse what-if perfectly ties in with Rosenthal and Brown's practical philosophy of starting with a legacy solution. Your recommendation system should be able to represent the legacy recommendation, else your product is not going to earn your customer's vote. Even if they purchased it, they may end up just using your GUI and throw your analytics into the trash. Unless you are providing an order of magnitude improvement in business value (in which case, you should start your own company!), revolutionary solutions are a hard sell. Yes, a customer values seemingly non-intuitive solutions that your OR unlocks to make him more money, but to truly ensure user-adoption, you need demonstrate this improvement from the legacy solution.
It also goes to user experience. In fact, it's about avoiding home-sickness. Being able to return to something familiar is critical for user acceptance. How many times have we initially cursed websites who suddenly redesigned and changed everything and you cant find your favorite menus in the same place? Windows OS always provides us the option of returning to something that resembles their previous release, even though they know they fixed a million bugs since their prior release. And we gradually outgrow the old if the new performs as advertised. I still use my favorite music player Winamp's classic skin. Feels like home.
Comments welcome.
If you are in the business of providing software-as-a-service, you can do several iterations with a customer and that practice is more forgiving, but i am learning the hard way that building an air-tight OR product and then handing it off to a customer is mighty hard and you only have one or maybe two chances to get it right.
(note: some dramatic license exercised for illustrative purposes)
Today's tab focuses on the 'what-if', the practice of walking a customer thru a choreographed sequence of optimization scenarios. An obvious choice is to start with a somewhat unconstrained model, say, only having boxed variables, and then show the user or the consultant how the solution changes as you throw in, one by one, all those beautiful constraints your system can handle. At the end of this process, if everything goes well, you end up with a real and optimized solution that business can use and will save them many $$.
Unfortunately, this approach of "increased complexity" rarely works. The procedure described above is nice if you are trying to teach a student about OR. The average business user doesn't really care about this. He/She probably understands real-life solutions much better than you. She/we wants your system to work well and maybe help get a bonus at the end of the fiscal year. In fact, you are better of looking at its dual, the reverse-what if.
The reverse what-if, as you would guess, starts with the best approximation of the customer's reality and then you navigate from there. Otherwise, the customer has little patience for all the n-1 steps in the 'straight' what-if which represent imaginary solutions he doesn't care about. The n'th step brought him to reality, which he already understands better than you, so you haven't helped him much.
The reverse what-if perfectly ties in with Rosenthal and Brown's practical philosophy of starting with a legacy solution. Your recommendation system should be able to represent the legacy recommendation, else your product is not going to earn your customer's vote. Even if they purchased it, they may end up just using your GUI and throw your analytics into the trash. Unless you are providing an order of magnitude improvement in business value (in which case, you should start your own company!), revolutionary solutions are a hard sell. Yes, a customer values seemingly non-intuitive solutions that your OR unlocks to make him more money, but to truly ensure user-adoption, you need demonstrate this improvement from the legacy solution.
It also goes to user experience. In fact, it's about avoiding home-sickness. Being able to return to something familiar is critical for user acceptance. How many times have we initially cursed websites who suddenly redesigned and changed everything and you cant find your favorite menus in the same place? Windows OS always provides us the option of returning to something that resembles their previous release, even though they know they fixed a million bugs since their prior release. And we gradually outgrow the old if the new performs as advertised. I still use my favorite music player Winamp's classic skin. Feels like home.
Comments welcome.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
June sports roundup with an O.R eye
May was spent writing and rewriting analytical specification documents for some exciting new retail O.R products, and when it was done, it is June. which tends to be the best month of the year for international sports fans. Apart from the main course of cricket, there's the NBA finals, which looks like going the distance, and the tennis at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, where baseline power-duels are becoming increasingly boring to watch. We had the spelling bee during the weekend, where Anamika Veeramani ('stromuhr') won this year's edition, while another Indian-American Aadith Moorthy won the other bee - The National Geographic ("where would you speak Tswana?"). Amazingly, both had perfect scores throughout the competition. The spelling bee in particular seemed more interesting this year. Unlike the past where gifted kids with 10Tbs of RAM seemed to do a "total enumeration" by memorizing entire dictionaries, this time the words were chosen such that you invariably had to apply analytical methods - 'word root signatures' - and construct an optimal prediction from pieces of noisy data, without a computer and within the time limit. Consequently, total enumeration failed this time, and made for better TV viewing on ESPN, apart from being a small victory for O.R.
It is increasingly important to read and experience other cultures, with so many words from all corners of the world. Any fan of the Asterix comic book series would have spelled 'Menhir' right, while anybody who's dined at a Punjabi Indian restaurant would have drank 'Lassi' for lunch. On the other hand, the word expert who walks the kids through the definitions needs to do his own homework. Either he needs to brush up his pronunciations of these new words, or there needs to be more than one expert doing the talking (Only french-rooted words ever seem to be get pronounced right). More and more analytic job descriptions require you to work harmoniously with cross-cultural teams in this new world. Now, in addition to knowing your AMPL, you have to correctly spell or pronounce the interviewer's name (without the middle initial, to make it easy), Aransanipalai K. Ananthapadmanabhan, to get the job. Good luck.
Talking about rainbow warriors, the FIFA football world cup starts in a couple of days in the diverse nation of South Africa (yes, Invictus is based on a true story). A whole bunch of analytical work has been devoted to the deadly business of penalty kicks, which seems to determine winners in recent times. A conclusion is that a spot-kick taker can increase the odds in his favor by acting upon the recommendations from this analysis. It is not a total crap-shoot, and some teams are consistently better at this, e.g., blood and guts Germany, while others such as the soccer hooligans from across the pond are abysmal. Of course, once the goalkeeper and the striker both starting applying analytics-based prayer techniques at this sports ritual, its going to cancel out and we are going back to square one. Until then, sports analytics witch-doctors bearing stochastic gifts can ride the gravy train.
update: also see here for more on the science of penalty kicks.
It is increasingly important to read and experience other cultures, with so many words from all corners of the world. Any fan of the Asterix comic book series would have spelled 'Menhir' right, while anybody who's dined at a Punjabi Indian restaurant would have drank 'Lassi' for lunch. On the other hand, the word expert who walks the kids through the definitions needs to do his own homework. Either he needs to brush up his pronunciations of these new words, or there needs to be more than one expert doing the talking (Only french-rooted words ever seem to be get pronounced right). More and more analytic job descriptions require you to work harmoniously with cross-cultural teams in this new world. Now, in addition to knowing your AMPL, you have to correctly spell or pronounce the interviewer's name (without the middle initial, to make it easy), Aransanipalai K. Ananthapadmanabhan, to get the job. Good luck.
Talking about rainbow warriors, the FIFA football world cup starts in a couple of days in the diverse nation of South Africa (yes, Invictus is based on a true story). A whole bunch of analytical work has been devoted to the deadly business of penalty kicks, which seems to determine winners in recent times. A conclusion is that a spot-kick taker can increase the odds in his favor by acting upon the recommendations from this analysis. It is not a total crap-shoot, and some teams are consistently better at this, e.g., blood and guts Germany, while others such as the soccer hooligans from across the pond are abysmal. Of course, once the goalkeeper and the striker both starting applying analytics-based prayer techniques at this sports ritual, its going to cancel out and we are going back to square one. Until then, sports analytics witch-doctors bearing stochastic gifts can ride the gravy train.
update: also see here for more on the science of penalty kicks.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Analytics and Cricket - III : Forecast Models gone wild
The cricket 20-20 world cup is going on in the West Indies, and a potentially great match between the West Indies and England was cut-short today by rain. Upon resumption after the rain stopped, the chasing team's target was reduced using the D/L rules from 192 @ 9.6 runs per over to just 60 in the 6 overs that was possible, with all ten wickets available. What a farce! As mentioned in an earlier post (as well as in ORMS today by the creators - Operations Research (O.R.) guys whose names appear in the title of this post), The D/L model is used to forecast the runs target for the second team. This is a fantastic analytical model that works splendidly for the 50-over format. Why? Because this was adopted about 20 years after 50-over cricket was popularized, and D/L had plenty of varied data to calibrate their model and estimate goodness of fit. On the other hand, everybody assumed that the same model would work like a charm for the 20-over format, since D/L works with the % of overs remaining, etc, so its just a case of using a different multiplier, right? Wrong.
Nobody in the International Cricket Committee (ICC) bothered to even do a cursory analysis of how this model would perform in T20 games - a typical O.R. case study of blind trust in a black-box solution that works fine in normal conditions but fails when the problem slightly changes. And thus we recognize a weak spot in this model. It is going to take time to gather the data needed for better calibration, but what do we do until then?
Like any parameter estimation problems in statistics, O.R and econometrics, this one also requires a significant number of strongly good quality, non-collinear historical observations to work really well. The three years so far has been insufficient. Is 7 more years of international T20 cricket sufficient? 17 more years? While T20 is also cricket (at least when Sachin or Mahela bat), the dynamics is quite different from the 50-over format. Teams are 'all-out' or close to all-out far less frequently compared to the 50-over game, and every cricket fan knows that a wicket in a 50-over game is disproportionately more valuable compared to a wicket in a 20-over game. Does 2 wickets in a T20 game equal in value, the loss of one wicket in a 50-over game? As we being to think about this, we realize that the risk-reward-resource model used by D/L could be quite different, what with just 120 balls per innings. Or it could be the same in principle and its just a simple recalibration. On the other hand, An T-20 over is 5% of an inning, compared to 2% for the longer format. Does this huge reduction cause some boundary condition effects that need to accounted for? Is there a possibility that that we never find the amount of good quality data in my lifetime to make this same model work reliably for T20 games? I think it is time to look inside the model and confirm first if the fundamental assumptions and modeling constructs continue to hold in a T20 situation. Clearly with the 3 years of data we have had so far, it appears to be off the mark. In fact, even in the 50-over game, the model is known to have some bias the favors the team batting second, which however, is not severe enough to warrant replacement. However, we should be looking at fundamental modeling extensions if we find intrinsic problems with the D/L model applied to T20.
Cricket is perhaps the most unpredictable of all sports and is called the game of 'glorious uncertainties'. I just saw an international team lose 5 wickets in a single over and yet end up winning the match comfortably. It's also embraced a modern and sophisticated O.R. solution to weather-interrupted matches, but please, lets get our modeling straight. This kind of uncertainty is great for the O.R person in me, but not at all enjoyable as a cricket fan, and unlike business, cricket is far too serious to left totally to O.R types like me.
Nobody in the International Cricket Committee (ICC) bothered to even do a cursory analysis of how this model would perform in T20 games - a typical O.R. case study of blind trust in a black-box solution that works fine in normal conditions but fails when the problem slightly changes. And thus we recognize a weak spot in this model. It is going to take time to gather the data needed for better calibration, but what do we do until then?
Like any parameter estimation problems in statistics, O.R and econometrics, this one also requires a significant number of strongly good quality, non-collinear historical observations to work really well. The three years so far has been insufficient. Is 7 more years of international T20 cricket sufficient? 17 more years? While T20 is also cricket (at least when Sachin or Mahela bat), the dynamics is quite different from the 50-over format. Teams are 'all-out' or close to all-out far less frequently compared to the 50-over game, and every cricket fan knows that a wicket in a 50-over game is disproportionately more valuable compared to a wicket in a 20-over game. Does 2 wickets in a T20 game equal in value, the loss of one wicket in a 50-over game? As we being to think about this, we realize that the risk-reward-resource model used by D/L could be quite different, what with just 120 balls per innings. Or it could be the same in principle and its just a simple recalibration. On the other hand, An T-20 over is 5% of an inning, compared to 2% for the longer format. Does this huge reduction cause some boundary condition effects that need to accounted for? Is there a possibility that that we never find the amount of good quality data in my lifetime to make this same model work reliably for T20 games? I think it is time to look inside the model and confirm first if the fundamental assumptions and modeling constructs continue to hold in a T20 situation. Clearly with the 3 years of data we have had so far, it appears to be off the mark. In fact, even in the 50-over game, the model is known to have some bias the favors the team batting second, which however, is not severe enough to warrant replacement. However, we should be looking at fundamental modeling extensions if we find intrinsic problems with the D/L model applied to T20.
Cricket is perhaps the most unpredictable of all sports and is called the game of 'glorious uncertainties'. I just saw an international team lose 5 wickets in a single over and yet end up winning the match comfortably. It's also embraced a modern and sophisticated O.R. solution to weather-interrupted matches, but please, lets get our modeling straight. This kind of uncertainty is great for the O.R person in me, but not at all enjoyable as a cricket fan, and unlike business, cricket is far too serious to left totally to O.R types like me.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Can OR provide strategy for the World Chess Championship Players?
Among the very many great sporting events that remain hidden away from the island of the USA is the ongoing battle for the World Championship in Chess. The classy defending champion, Vishy Anand is a sentimental favorite, given that he's based in Chennai, India (Madras) where I studied. The challenger is the Bulgarian Veselin Topalov, who before the title bout started, had a slight head-head advantage over Anand. To add to this, The volcano in Iceland meant that Vishy had to endure a several-day road trip across Europe to get to the venue in time after the chess authorities only granted him an one-day extension instead of a three-day break he asked for. Vishy promptly lost the first game, but won two of the next three to open a slender one-point lead. For those who remember the Fisher-Korchnoi-Karpov-Kasparov days in the cold war era, 21st century chess still remains an incredible mental sport where supreme ego, psychological gamesmanship, and sharp analytical intellects clash to create some amazing drama.
A great blog to cover chess is maintained by Susan Polgar (one of the famous trio of Polgar sisters from Hungary) now residing in Texas. An incredible talent herself, she won an under-11 girls chess competition in her country undefeated at the age of 4, and is arguably the world's greatest female player. She asks the question - How should Topalov plan his strategy for the remaining games?
The first to reach 6.5 points in this 12-game series wins, and with Anand at 2.5 currently, a risky approach may cost Topalov many games, whereas a placid approach may enable Anand to force some quick draws (0.5 points each). I wonder what statistics, OR, and game theory has to say with regards to the optimal policy to adopt for either player?
If you are far behind in points, then it may pay to throw caution into the winds, since there is little to lose, while in the current situation, the risk and reward is still somewhat balanced.
Does a player with a lead of one point or more simply play to force quick and safe draws?
Interesting questions. Some answers would be nice.
correction (April 30) - Susan Polgar may not even be the best chess player in her family, let alone the world :-) That credit probably goes to her sister Judith Polgar.
A great blog to cover chess is maintained by Susan Polgar (one of the famous trio of Polgar sisters from Hungary) now residing in Texas. An incredible talent herself, she won an under-11 girls chess competition in her country undefeated at the age of 4, and is arguably the world's greatest female player. She asks the question - How should Topalov plan his strategy for the remaining games?
The first to reach 6.5 points in this 12-game series wins, and with Anand at 2.5 currently, a risky approach may cost Topalov many games, whereas a placid approach may enable Anand to force some quick draws (0.5 points each). I wonder what statistics, OR, and game theory has to say with regards to the optimal policy to adopt for either player?
If you are far behind in points, then it may pay to throw caution into the winds, since there is little to lose, while in the current situation, the risk and reward is still somewhat balanced.
Does a player with a lead of one point or more simply play to force quick and safe draws?
Interesting questions. Some answers would be nice.
correction (April 30) - Susan Polgar may not even be the best chess player in her family, let alone the world :-) That credit probably goes to her sister Judith Polgar.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The Informs Practice Conference and the OR think tank misses a trick or two
How can Informs make the Practice conference even better? An advantage of being an unofficial reporter is that I can avoid self-congratulatory blog posts and actually criticize without any sugar coating - in the hope that we get out of our comfort zone and make this an even better event next year.
Clearly some things were out of their control. All the OR folks in the world would not have been able to predict the impact of a volcano in Iceland on the travel plans of overseas visitors to the conference. Also, Dr. Micheal Trick, whose pioneering web page on O.R was the main source of information as well as inspiration for graduate students like me in the 1990s, and motivated me to join this exciting field, was missing, and one can't fault Informs for this. I was really looking forward to shaking his hands and thanking him for his service. 'Marketing in Online Social Spaces,' by Kevin Geraghty, Vice President, Research & Analytics, of 360i was a really good one (somehow I forgot to cover this in my daily conference tab). Kevin was providing an example of marketing campaigns using social networking data. He found out (using completely public domain tools!) that in the OR blog world, to the surprise of many, a certain Lieutenant in the Navy had more 'online friends' than Dr. Trick, so if one were to promote some hypothetical OR product, then he should be chosen as a first reviewer, assuming that those friends were OR types rather than 'sailors'. He also obtained other funny personal trivia from public domain, that I'll just leave out.
A second peeve I had was the highly limited lunch and dinner options for vegetarians (Two boiled asparagus roots and a turdy-looking cuboid of tofu does not an Edelman banquet make!). This should not be difficult to fix. If this doesn't change, I frankly don't see much point in shelling out two grand and semi-starve most of the conference. Thankfully, due to the purely individual initiative of the obviously superb Hilton staff, i was not totally inconvenienced. Kudos to those guys. They got their 'hospitality management OR' right.
Third, attendees should be able to obtain access to the video archive of the talks. Static slides don't cut it anymore. Unlike academic conferences, the value of practice-oriented conferences often lies in what is said in between slides.
On the positive side, the posters were a big hit. One can engage the presenters informally and in 5-10 minutes get a high-level idea of what their innovation is about. And the good thing is that you can visit them in your own time and network too. For example, I found out that the Sandia Labs in beautiful New Mexico, has this really cool Python-based modeling language (PYOMO?) that they used for stochastic programming. Can't wait to try it out. At the MPL booth, I found out that that they are making software available for free on a Windows environment. In tandem with COIN-OR (which they package MPL with, i think), you have a solid modeling and optimization package, free!
My best talks in no particular order - Sanjay Saigal (Intechne) on uncertainty , Jeffrey Cramm (Univ of Cincinnatti) on practical OR, Kevin Geraghty (360i) on social networking, John Osborne (Kroger) on OR innovation against all corporate odds, and any Edelman presentation.
overall grade: 7/10
I'll end on a warning note. The bottom line goal is that if people are thinking analytics, then O.R should not be far off from their thoughts. Well so far, O.R has been losing this battle on many fronts. Clearly, we do not want to lose our existing membership in any OR-friendly industries (most representative of the ones who showed up). However, we should be doing much more to attract members from the non-traditional, emerging industries (very few of those). At the end of the day, OR is an applied field, and while the analytics turf can be defended in journals, textbooks, and conferences, it can only be won in hard-fought battles by in-the-trenches OR foot soldiers, who need be to well-equipped and trained to build innovative, scalable, practical products and solutions for real-world problems in the 21st century - that is increasingly going to be marked by many terabytes of noisy data. When we start with "min z = c.x + y: ax <= b", O.R academic programs should first be teaching how and where to get the "a, b, c" in this and what is really means, rather than taking a short-cut straight to 'x, y, z' in the abstract world, like we have been doing the last few decades. If you have other questions, ping me and I'll tab it here ...
Clearly some things were out of their control. All the OR folks in the world would not have been able to predict the impact of a volcano in Iceland on the travel plans of overseas visitors to the conference. Also, Dr. Micheal Trick, whose pioneering web page on O.R was the main source of information as well as inspiration for graduate students like me in the 1990s, and motivated me to join this exciting field, was missing, and one can't fault Informs for this. I was really looking forward to shaking his hands and thanking him for his service. 'Marketing in Online Social Spaces,' by Kevin Geraghty, Vice President, Research & Analytics, of 360i was a really good one (somehow I forgot to cover this in my daily conference tab). Kevin was providing an example of marketing campaigns using social networking data. He found out (using completely public domain tools!) that in the OR blog world, to the surprise of many, a certain Lieutenant in the Navy had more 'online friends' than Dr. Trick, so if one were to promote some hypothetical OR product, then he should be chosen as a first reviewer, assuming that those friends were OR types rather than 'sailors'. He also obtained other funny personal trivia from public domain, that I'll just leave out.
A second peeve I had was the highly limited lunch and dinner options for vegetarians (Two boiled asparagus roots and a turdy-looking cuboid of tofu does not an Edelman banquet make!). This should not be difficult to fix. If this doesn't change, I frankly don't see much point in shelling out two grand and semi-starve most of the conference. Thankfully, due to the purely individual initiative of the obviously superb Hilton staff, i was not totally inconvenienced. Kudos to those guys. They got their 'hospitality management OR' right.
Third, attendees should be able to obtain access to the video archive of the talks. Static slides don't cut it anymore. Unlike academic conferences, the value of practice-oriented conferences often lies in what is said in between slides.
On the positive side, the posters were a big hit. One can engage the presenters informally and in 5-10 minutes get a high-level idea of what their innovation is about. And the good thing is that you can visit them in your own time and network too. For example, I found out that the Sandia Labs in beautiful New Mexico, has this really cool Python-based modeling language (PYOMO?) that they used for stochastic programming. Can't wait to try it out. At the MPL booth, I found out that that they are making software available for free on a Windows environment. In tandem with COIN-OR (which they package MPL with, i think), you have a solid modeling and optimization package, free!
My best talks in no particular order - Sanjay Saigal (Intechne) on uncertainty , Jeffrey Cramm (Univ of Cincinnatti) on practical OR, Kevin Geraghty (360i) on social networking, John Osborne (Kroger) on OR innovation against all corporate odds, and any Edelman presentation.
overall grade: 7/10
I'll end on a warning note. The bottom line goal is that if people are thinking analytics, then O.R should not be far off from their thoughts. Well so far, O.R has been losing this battle on many fronts. Clearly, we do not want to lose our existing membership in any OR-friendly industries (most representative of the ones who showed up). However, we should be doing much more to attract members from the non-traditional, emerging industries (very few of those). At the end of the day, OR is an applied field, and while the analytics turf can be defended in journals, textbooks, and conferences, it can only be won in hard-fought battles by in-the-trenches OR foot soldiers, who need be to well-equipped and trained to build innovative, scalable, practical products and solutions for real-world problems in the 21st century - that is increasingly going to be marked by many terabytes of noisy data. When we start with "min z = c.x + y: ax <= b", O.R academic programs should first be teaching how and where to get the "a, b, c" in this and what is really means, rather than taking a short-cut straight to 'x, y, z' in the abstract world, like we have been doing the last few decades. If you have other questions, ping me and I'll tab it here ...
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Informs Practice Conference 2010 - Day 3
The day started off with an encore presentation by the edelman winner - Indeval. Interesting talk. The theoretical stuff was not particularly interesting, but the fact that they got some OR stuff to work in real time in a mission-critical system, and involving billions of dollars is really cool. Next, i managed to attend a couple of optimization-focused talks on Approximate Dynamic Programming at Schneider Trucking, followed by 'the practice of the alternative' by Dr. Jeffrey Camm from the U of Cincinatti. He is from the Brown-Rosenthal school of practical OR, which i heartily subscribe to as well, and it was probably the most informative talk of the meet for me.
The rest of the day was devoted to the energy industry. We had another plenary by Richard O'Neill, Chief Economic Advisor to the Fed Energy Regulatory Commission. This guy went into some depth on electrical circuits and mixed integer programs. Quite unexpected, but it was great for us optimization practitioners. Then I got to listen to more presentations on energy-related topics including analytics for the smart-grid.
All in all, it was an enjoyable conference, even if one can attend only 10-12 of the 80 presentations on offer. Great location, excellent hotel service. Good job, Informs!
The rest of the day was devoted to the energy industry. We had another plenary by Richard O'Neill, Chief Economic Advisor to the Fed Energy Regulatory Commission. This guy went into some depth on electrical circuits and mixed integer programs. Quite unexpected, but it was great for us optimization practitioners. Then I got to listen to more presentations on energy-related topics including analytics for the smart-grid.
All in all, it was an enjoyable conference, even if one can attend only 10-12 of the 80 presentations on offer. Great location, excellent hotel service. Good job, Informs!
Monday, April 19, 2010
Informs Practice Conference 2010 - Day 2
The day started off with a plenary by a senior guy in Walt Disney. Equally interestingly, he worked at PeopleExpress decades ago, now part of Airline Revenue Management folklore. the key takeaway was that smart OR ultimately improves the odds in your favor by one or two percentage points, and that is a really big deal. Following that, there was an incredible variety of interesting topics to choose from, many of which were scheduled at the same time. So I tried to avoid MBAs, vendors, as well as academic types and listen to the in-the-trenches practice guys. The first one was the head of R&D in Kroger, a group that's 2 years old in an 126-year old company. This talk focused on how to cut thru the (126 years of ) red tape to get genuinely valuable work done. Very interesting. Quotes included "you should be willing to bet your job that your project idea works ..." and a need for passion. Every body's hand in the audience went up when he asked how many people in the audience liked their jobs. Not surprising. Practical OR is fun.
The next interesting talk was by Dr. Sanjay Saigal on probability management. He is a non-conformist and funny, and he put on a real show, and i really wished this talk had continued for another 15-20 mins. Great topic.
All in all, I missed several great talks. If anything, the practice conference has an abundance of riches in terms of the high-quality content presented. I'm distraught that I may have to skip a talk by the uber-brilliant Dr. Ellis Johnson tomorrow to catch another one at the same time that is equally exciting and pertinent to my current line of work.
One of the the 'birds of a feather' discussion in the evening focused on the role of O.R in analytics. I've already talked about the identity crisis facing OR'ers in a prior post, and INFORMS, as well as OR academic programs should act soon to fix this gap. The master of ceremonies for the Edelman awards later mentioned (or paraphrased) that OR is the most important invisible profession in the world today.
Finally, i sat in on an Edelman finalist presentation by the New Brunswick department of Transportation, Canada, since they were my sentimental pick - NB is just three hours further east of my place in Eastern Maine. In the end, the bankers won it. Interestingly, almost every single entry featured a company partnering with a university or a OR software vendor.
Today, I managed to spot two OR all-time greats, Dr. Cynthia Barnhart, and Peter Kolesar. Too bad I did not get a chance to interact with them, given that they were involved as an Edelman judge, and finalist, respectively.
The next interesting talk was by Dr. Sanjay Saigal on probability management. He is a non-conformist and funny, and he put on a real show, and i really wished this talk had continued for another 15-20 mins. Great topic.
All in all, I missed several great talks. If anything, the practice conference has an abundance of riches in terms of the high-quality content presented. I'm distraught that I may have to skip a talk by the uber-brilliant Dr. Ellis Johnson tomorrow to catch another one at the same time that is equally exciting and pertinent to my current line of work.
One of the the 'birds of a feather' discussion in the evening focused on the role of O.R in analytics. I've already talked about the identity crisis facing OR'ers in a prior post, and INFORMS, as well as OR academic programs should act soon to fix this gap. The master of ceremonies for the Edelman awards later mentioned (or paraphrased) that OR is the most important invisible profession in the world today.
Finally, i sat in on an Edelman finalist presentation by the New Brunswick department of Transportation, Canada, since they were my sentimental pick - NB is just three hours further east of my place in Eastern Maine. In the end, the bankers won it. Interestingly, almost every single entry featured a company partnering with a university or a OR software vendor.
Today, I managed to spot two OR all-time greats, Dr. Cynthia Barnhart, and Peter Kolesar. Too bad I did not get a chance to interact with them, given that they were involved as an Edelman judge, and finalist, respectively.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Informs Practice Conference 2010 - Day 1
Getting from North Eastern Maine to Orlando involved going thru Detriot. For some reason, this US carrier seems to 'dynamically' assign gates at DTW to arriving aircraft, so we "arrived" 30 minutes ahead of schedule, but arrived 30 minutes later. This is not the first time it's happened. Anyway, the weather is Orlando is great compared to Maine which was in the low 40s when I left ...
The workshops on Day 1 were quite useful. Forio Business solutions had some nice system dynamics tools for building snazzy looking web-simulations. I managed to get through one Markdown Optimization example, simulating different price elasticities. The next workshop was enjoyable as well as informative. Getting to to see the legendary Dr. Bixby in person was cool. Gurobi 3.0 now has a parallel barrier solver in place, and I verified that this one is deterministic. Their dev team is sure keeping a fast pace of major releases and their benchmark results continue to impress and I resolved to learn Python. Finally, the third workshop was with OPTMODEL, SAS's versatile modeling and optimization language / procedure. They displayed some nice decomposition approaches to a Kidney exchange and ATM optimization problems, all deployed within OPTMODEL. I felt that the Kidney exchange model (KEM) could have benefited from some specialized TSP subtour constraints, but then again, some nice work on display by the young OR experts from this company.
It was nice to catch up with old airline colleagues, and INFORMS had some vegetarian food, thankfully. Finally, it was nice to meet Dr. Ravi Ahuja, another O.R. giant, in person. These were the stand-out moments for day 1 - a rare chance of interacting with the stalwarts of our discipline in person.
The workshops on Day 1 were quite useful. Forio Business solutions had some nice system dynamics tools for building snazzy looking web-simulations. I managed to get through one Markdown Optimization example, simulating different price elasticities. The next workshop was enjoyable as well as informative. Getting to to see the legendary Dr. Bixby in person was cool. Gurobi 3.0 now has a parallel barrier solver in place, and I verified that this one is deterministic. Their dev team is sure keeping a fast pace of major releases and their benchmark results continue to impress and I resolved to learn Python. Finally, the third workshop was with OPTMODEL, SAS's versatile modeling and optimization language / procedure. They displayed some nice decomposition approaches to a Kidney exchange and ATM optimization problems, all deployed within OPTMODEL. I felt that the Kidney exchange model (KEM) could have benefited from some specialized TSP subtour constraints, but then again, some nice work on display by the young OR experts from this company.
It was nice to catch up with old airline colleagues, and INFORMS had some vegetarian food, thankfully. Finally, it was nice to meet Dr. Ravi Ahuja, another O.R. giant, in person. These were the stand-out moments for day 1 - a rare chance of interacting with the stalwarts of our discipline in person.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Doogie, Darwin, Dowry, and the TSP
A couple of teenagers from the U.S. visited the beautiful IIT campus in Madras (Chennai), India in 1989-90. They were not there to attend the popular collegiate cultural festival 'Mardi Gras' as it was known back in those days, but to present a research paper on AIDS. They happened to be brothers, Balamurali Ambati, and Jayakrishna Ambati, who completed medical school at a fairly young age. Per Wikipedia, BA graduated from the Mount Sinai school of medicine at the age of 13, and become a qualified doctor at 17 in 1995.
Today, the Ambani brothers hog the media space in India as they seek to become richer, but for a brief while in the 1990s, the elder Ambati brother got entangled in a 'dowry harassment' scandal. Dowry harassment reports was big news in India, with the per-capita dowry-deaths in line with the number of 'murder for insurance' cases in the US, or the wife-beating cases in Switzerland. Anyway, reports indicate that the case fell apart after the bride's father was recorded on tape trying to extort a few hundred big ones in blackmail money. Unfortunately for the elder brother, it looks like like he had to cool his heels in India until this case was wholly resolved, losing a good two years in the "youngest achiever" race, which has since become an idiotic, even deadly craze in Southern India. This is in contrast with the more comical approach in Northern India and Pakistan, where many kids are 2-5 years older than their official age. If you were that skinny, baby-faced runt in a middle school in Bangalore, he would be that guy with the stubble in the last bench, and the captain of your school's football (soccer) and (field-) hockey teams.
Pardon the digression. Around the time the Ambati brothers visited the IITM campus (A former student reminisces here) to talk about AIDS, they were also the primary authors of this published paper on the traveling salesman problem. The title is exciting, but a tad misleading, in that it hints at a polynomial time algorithm for the NP-Hard TSP. It resembles a randomized heuristic approach based on the theory of natural selection, and appears to possess good computational properties, and has been cited more than once in followup research in this area. On the other hand, I don't think even Doogie did any OR work, real or fictional.
Today, the Ambani brothers hog the media space in India as they seek to become richer, but for a brief while in the 1990s, the elder Ambati brother got entangled in a 'dowry harassment' scandal. Dowry harassment reports was big news in India, with the per-capita dowry-deaths in line with the number of 'murder for insurance' cases in the US, or the wife-beating cases in Switzerland. Anyway, reports indicate that the case fell apart after the bride's father was recorded on tape trying to extort a few hundred big ones in blackmail money. Unfortunately for the elder brother, it looks like like he had to cool his heels in India until this case was wholly resolved, losing a good two years in the "youngest achiever" race, which has since become an idiotic, even deadly craze in Southern India. This is in contrast with the more comical approach in Northern India and Pakistan, where many kids are 2-5 years older than their official age. If you were that skinny, baby-faced runt in a middle school in Bangalore, he would be that guy with the stubble in the last bench, and the captain of your school's football (soccer) and (field-) hockey teams.
Pardon the digression. Around the time the Ambati brothers visited the IITM campus (A former student reminisces here) to talk about AIDS, they were also the primary authors of this published paper on the traveling salesman problem. The title is exciting, but a tad misleading, in that it hints at a polynomial time algorithm for the NP-Hard TSP. It resembles a randomized heuristic approach based on the theory of natural selection, and appears to possess good computational properties, and has been cited more than once in followup research in this area. On the other hand, I don't think even Doogie did any OR work, real or fictional.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
All Set for the INFORMS Practice Conference
Wonders never cease. One advantage of working for a solvent company is that it provides a rare chance of attending a major conference within the U.S. The INFORMS practice conference seemed like a good choice. Besides, the annual INFORMS conference is a few months away, and one never knows how the travel budget is gonna change. A greedy approach works better here... It's been eons since the previous conference - not surprising if you spent dog-years in the mostly-bankrupt airline industry.
Given the short notice, I'm presenting absolutely nothing, get four days off from work to listen to cool OR guys talk, and the plan is just to learn as much as possible and be an on-site reporter. Please email me at shivaram (dot) subramanian (at) gmail.com, if you are interested in talking OR during the meet. I will be posting daily tabs of the conference here, so watch this space. If you would have liked to be at the conference but could not make it, please email me any topics you would like me to cover here, and I will do my best. As always, any tips on the optimal way to cover conferences is welcome.
For those practitioners interested in the costs involved, here's the lowdown. Airfare is about 400$. 3-4 day hotel stay is about 700-900$ (now I know how it feels to be on the receiving side of Pricing optimization). I'm staying an additional day (Sunday) to take advantage of the technology workshops and network. Registration fees for non-members is about 900$. The total cost, including daily expenses is in the ballpark of $2500. It remains to be seen if the feedback and new ideas that one can get out of this outweighs these costs. Last year's Edelman work was fantastic, and hopefully this year will be just as good.
Given the short notice, I'm presenting absolutely nothing, get four days off from work to listen to cool OR guys talk, and the plan is just to learn as much as possible and be an on-site reporter. Please email me at shivaram (dot) subramanian (at) gmail.com, if you are interested in talking OR during the meet. I will be posting daily tabs of the conference here, so watch this space. If you would have liked to be at the conference but could not make it, please email me any topics you would like me to cover here, and I will do my best. As always, any tips on the optimal way to cover conferences is welcome.
For those practitioners interested in the costs involved, here's the lowdown. Airfare is about 400$. 3-4 day hotel stay is about 700-900$ (now I know how it feels to be on the receiving side of Pricing optimization). I'm staying an additional day (Sunday) to take advantage of the technology workshops and network. Registration fees for non-members is about 900$. The total cost, including daily expenses is in the ballpark of $2500. It remains to be seen if the feedback and new ideas that one can get out of this outweighs these costs. Last year's Edelman work was fantastic, and hopefully this year will be just as good.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Analytics and Cricket - II : The IPL effect
This is second in the series of articles on O.R. and cricket. Click here for the first part, done a while ago.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) is close to becoming the number one Indian global brand - not just the number one sports brand. It has overtaken past colonial stereotypes (such as snake charmers, elephants, and Maharajahs), current pop stereotypes (IT outsourcing brands like Infosys, Wipro, et al, knowledge-brands like the IIT graduate, etc). The two newest franchise teams unveiled in this fledgling three-year old league were purchased for $333M, costing more than a couple of current NHL teams. Sports has become big business, even as the cricket fan in me rebels against this. Several owners have 'Bollywood' connections. Not surprising, given that these movie types make so many expensive flops year after year, the risk level for a cricket venture is surely much lower.
This IPL season is on YouTube now after a pioneering deal with Google, and this experiment serves as a nice dress rehearsal for the search engine company toward more such live streaming ventures in the future. In terms of audience size, it's easily a factor of ten-twenty bigger than that for NCAA basketball. India has a lot of cricket-crazy people. I've provided the YouTube link for my favorite match of the tournament so far: Bangalore v Mumbai. This is the shortest form of cricket played where each innings lasts twenty overs and the entire game is completed in three hours.
We will cover two new analytical induced innovations observed in this season's IPL.
First, the number of run-outs (analogous to a baseball strike-out where a player doesn't make it to a base in time) seems to have increased dramatically. Why? It looks like team statisticians have noticed that a traditionally weak area of teams is fielding and the probability of a direct hit on the stumps is low. This reduces the risk of getting run-out and the reward for stealing an additional run against statistically poor fielding teams may be well worth the risk. Teams that do not improve their fielding will probably see this hit-probability decrease. Teams will take more chances against you and more members in your team will have the opportunity to show-case their non-athletic, keystone kops-like fielding prowess leading to a deterioration in stats. Conversely, good fielding teams can improve their hit-probability stats and reap the reward in terms of effecting more run-outs. Teams of both kinds can be seen. The ones adopting better fielding standards are at the top of the points table.
A second analytic innovation is the form of a special T-20 (twenty-over cricket) bat and is now the most famous mongoose in India (that's the brand name for this bat). It has a handle as long as the blade itself, with the total length of the bat itself being constant. Statistics show that in this form of the game, oftentimes, half a bat is often better than a full-one, if optimally designed! Don't believe it? See this YouTube clip of Matt "the bat" Hayden, the first player in the IPL to use this bat. He is certainly not going to be the last.
So why is the mongoose effective? In the most serious form of cricket (test cricket), a full bat is a must. It's a longer game (over 5 days) and the chances of getting out is much, much higher over time and you want a bat as large as a barn door to prevent the ball from disturbing your stumps. From the T20 perspective, the ball travels the longest when it hits the sweet spot of the bat (roughly three-fourth of the way down a bat), and combined with the fact that getting out in T20 is not such a big deal, you end up with the mongoose, which is essentially just a long handle and a reinforced lower half, like a pendulum. It's made of wood just like the traditional bat, just as long, and roughly the same weight. For a given period of time at the crease, you are more likely to get out using the mongoose, but the expected number of runs (specifically in the form of hitting sixers) you could score before that happens can be much higher, thus making it an attractive trade-off in certain T20 match situations.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) is close to becoming the number one Indian global brand - not just the number one sports brand. It has overtaken past colonial stereotypes (such as snake charmers, elephants, and Maharajahs), current pop stereotypes (IT outsourcing brands like Infosys, Wipro, et al, knowledge-brands like the IIT graduate, etc). The two newest franchise teams unveiled in this fledgling three-year old league were purchased for $333M, costing more than a couple of current NHL teams. Sports has become big business, even as the cricket fan in me rebels against this. Several owners have 'Bollywood' connections. Not surprising, given that these movie types make so many expensive flops year after year, the risk level for a cricket venture is surely much lower.
This IPL season is on YouTube now after a pioneering deal with Google, and this experiment serves as a nice dress rehearsal for the search engine company toward more such live streaming ventures in the future. In terms of audience size, it's easily a factor of ten-twenty bigger than that for NCAA basketball. India has a lot of cricket-crazy people. I've provided the YouTube link for my favorite match of the tournament so far: Bangalore v Mumbai. This is the shortest form of cricket played where each innings lasts twenty overs and the entire game is completed in three hours.
We will cover two new analytical induced innovations observed in this season's IPL.
First, the number of run-outs (analogous to a baseball strike-out where a player doesn't make it to a base in time) seems to have increased dramatically. Why? It looks like team statisticians have noticed that a traditionally weak area of teams is fielding and the probability of a direct hit on the stumps is low. This reduces the risk of getting run-out and the reward for stealing an additional run against statistically poor fielding teams may be well worth the risk. Teams that do not improve their fielding will probably see this hit-probability decrease. Teams will take more chances against you and more members in your team will have the opportunity to show-case their non-athletic, keystone kops-like fielding prowess leading to a deterioration in stats. Conversely, good fielding teams can improve their hit-probability stats and reap the reward in terms of effecting more run-outs. Teams of both kinds can be seen. The ones adopting better fielding standards are at the top of the points table.
A second analytic innovation is the form of a special T-20 (twenty-over cricket) bat and is now the most famous mongoose in India (that's the brand name for this bat). It has a handle as long as the blade itself, with the total length of the bat itself being constant. Statistics show that in this form of the game, oftentimes, half a bat is often better than a full-one, if optimally designed! Don't believe it? See this YouTube clip of Matt "the bat" Hayden, the first player in the IPL to use this bat. He is certainly not going to be the last.
So why is the mongoose effective? In the most serious form of cricket (test cricket), a full bat is a must. It's a longer game (over 5 days) and the chances of getting out is much, much higher over time and you want a bat as large as a barn door to prevent the ball from disturbing your stumps. From the T20 perspective, the ball travels the longest when it hits the sweet spot of the bat (roughly three-fourth of the way down a bat), and combined with the fact that getting out in T20 is not such a big deal, you end up with the mongoose, which is essentially just a long handle and a reinforced lower half, like a pendulum. It's made of wood just like the traditional bat, just as long, and roughly the same weight. For a given period of time at the crease, you are more likely to get out using the mongoose, but the expected number of runs (specifically in the form of hitting sixers) you could score before that happens can be much higher, thus making it an attractive trade-off in certain T20 match situations.
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