Searching for the right job to spend the rest of your life with? Then try our match-making service for college mathematics majors.
 

MATCH-MAKING SERVICE for COLLEGE MATHEMATICS MAJORS

Take our poll.

• Have you ever been jealous of your engineering friends and their senior design projects?
• Have you ever gotten so excited about an application of mathematics that you said, ``That's so cool!"?
• Have you ever silently wished your book contained more of those shaded Applications, Projects, and Case Studies sections?
• Did you love Probability and Mathematical Modeling, but struggle through Topology and Complex Analysis, arguing that you just didn't see the relevance of those sujects?

If you answered ``Yes" to any of these questions, then maybe OR is the match for you.

Meet OR, short for Operations Research.

He's a well-rounded, personable guy with great communication, presentation and writing skills.  Because he was born during World War II, his mother likes to proudly recall how he "helped take the guesswork out of deploying
radar and searching for enemy submarines" [1] . But OR modestly claims he merely uses ``a scientific approach to analyzing problems and making decisions" [1].  He often uses "mathematics and mathematical modeling on
computers to forecast the implications of various choices and zero in on the best alternatives" [1].
OR comes from a big family; his relatives include Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, Engineering, Business, Finance, and Economics.  But OR also promises to introduce you to Queueing Theory, Optimization, Network Analysis and Simulation.

OR has always had an interdisciplinary bent.  In fact, in his free time, he enjoys solving such diverse problems as [1]:
 

• What new sanitary facilities will be needed to serve the population of Sun Valley, Idaho, in the year 2000?
• How can a dress manufacturer lay out patterns to minimize wasted material?
• How many elevators should be installed in a new office building to cut waiting time?
• What are the most cost-effective precautions to reduce the occurrence and environmental impact of oil spills?
• What's the most efficient method for routing a long-distance telephone call?
• Or how long should the warranty on an automobile or appliance run, what should it cover, and what will it cost the manufacturer?

Some of his major accomplishments include:
 

• Saving Wrangler Jeans $37 million a year by implementing a seven-model approach to inventory reduction.
• Saving U.S. taxpayers over $25 billion by instituting the Medicare DRG classification system.  This system reduced the average patient stay by 50% and improved hospital profits while maintaining the quality of care.
• Creating SABRE Decision Technologies. SDT, a sister company of American Airlines, makes the travel process painless for customers.  Booking a flight by phone is fast due to the real-time reservations system SDT built for American Airlines.  SDT also takes care of the flight and crew schedules as well as overbooking decisions.
• Developing ULAM (UNOS Liver Allocation Model).  Liver transplant surgery has developed into a life-saving medical technology.  Since donated livers are scarce, the allocation of livers is a difficult issue. Various allocation policies are hotly debated.  UNOS is the organization responsible for maintaining patient waiting lists and running the program that allocates donated organs to waiting patients.  In 1995, UNOS contracted with Pritsker Corporation, a company specializing in decision and simulation analysis. The ULAM model, developed by Pritsker Corporation, uses simulation to compare proposed alternative liver allocation policies.  Now UNOS uses an objective system to determine which allocation policy saves the greatest number of lives.

 Wow, what an industrious guy!  And your parents will be happy to hear that, in 1998 with his master's degree, OR averaged $47,070 [2] and plans to get his doctorate soon and earn over $70,000 annually [1].

If you are interested in learning more about Operations Research, visit the INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) website at  https://www.informs.org.
 
 

References:

[1] INFORMS Online. Career Booklet. Jan. 1997; available on the World Wide Web at
    https://www.informs.org/Edu/Career/booklet.html.

[2] Occupational Outlook Handbook. Operations Research Analysts. April 2000; available at
    https://stats.bls.gov/oco/ocos044.htm.
 

page last updated by Amy Langville on 7/6/00