Operations Research Management Science - Issues In Education

<BODY bgcolor="#ffffff" link="cc0000" vlink="cc0000" text="#000000"> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br>   <table border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 width=480><tr valign=top> <td width=10><img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 hspace=4 border=0></td> <td width=470> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><B><I><A HREF="../../ORMS.shtml" TARGET="_top">OR/MS Today</A> - October 2003</I></B></font><BR> <hr size="1"> <img src="cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <font face="times new roman, times"> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><B>Issues In Education</B></FONT><br> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=8 border=0><br> <FONT SIZE="+2"><B>Spreadsheet Modeling Is a Strategic Opportunity</B></FONT><BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><B>By Thomas A. Grossman</B></FONT><br> <hr size="1"> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br>    <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><I>This is the fourth in an occasional series aimed at making management science the best course in the business school.</I></font><BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br> When teaching OR/MS to business students, there is a tendency to skip over the "easy stuff" in our rush to get to "the good stuff." Because of our generous desire to equip our students with powerful tools like optimization and simulation, many instructors are loathe to waste precious contact hours on supposedly easy topics like how to create a model of an unstructured business situation, how to efficiently express that model in a spreadsheet that isn't full of errors, and systematic methods to explore and extract insight from a model.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> In the December 2002 edition of this column, I argued that these supposedly easy topics are actually the keys that enable business students to unlock the vault containing the OR/MS treasure trove of techniques. In a future column, I'll provide some suggestions for teaching business students how to efficiently and effectively create models, which is both easier and harder than you might think.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> In this column, I'll argue that it is in the strategic interest of the profession to embrace spreadsheet modeling. But first, I discuss historical issues around the advent of spreadsheets and end-user modeling. I will suggest that our emotional responses to change may affect the way that we as individuals and as a profession have responded to the advent of spreadsheet modeling by the masses.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=3><B>Modeling Was an Elite Skill</B></FONT><BR> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> Once upon a time, business modeling was the exclusive preserve of an elite group of experts, mostly OR practitioners along with some IT systems analysts. The reason was simple: creating and using a model required skills in abstract algebraic modeling, followed by writing and running software on a mainframe computer. It was hard, and managers were grateful for any analytic capacity they could get.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> When a modeling opportunity was discovered, and budget was miraculously obtained, and the IT mavens were either convinced to cooperate or were successfully evaded, and when Jupiter aligned with Mars, then a modeling project would be started. Expert modelers would be called in, cogitate mightily, code furiously, debug frantically  and lo!  they would bring forth a model that computed something previously unknowable, and there would be happiness in the land.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> You can read in <I>Interfaces</I> about some of these projects, going back for decades. Managers were generally pleased with the results, and many practitioners made comfortable livings from building, maintaining and interpreting modeling systems. We in the OR elite were generally happy with our role in the world, although faintly concerned that it was so hard to sell the value of OR to managers.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> Then came a revolution, in the form of the personal computer and the spreadsheet. The PC largely eliminated the computational barrier to modeling. Managers no longer needed to humbly petition the mighty Lords of IT to develop even simple analytical tools. Simultaneously, the spreadsheet swept away the algebraic barrier to creating and expressing models. Suddenly, modeling was no longer a big deal. Anybody could create and use models, and there are now tens of millions of business modelers. The result is that modeling ceased to be a task performed by a small elite, and became a run-of-the-mill business activity. This is good news for the business world, and it ought to be good news for OR. However, elites tend not to like it when the masses intrude on their perquisites.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=3><B>Elite No More</B></FONT><BR> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> I think that the OR profession has had difficulty adapting to the unpleasant reality that spreadsheets make our elite OR skills less "special" than they once were. For example, I am highly peeved that all that mathematics I so proudly mastered in my graduate-level linear programming class (and a whole lot more math I never had time to study) has been concentrated into the Solver spreadsheet add-in. The Solver is so simple that a 12th grader can figure it out on her own, without any help from me or other OR experts. So much for being an elite.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> It's no fun being a dethroned elite. For many people in the profession, doing OR provided membership in an exclusive club with high mathematical standards for entry. Now some of OR's most fundamental tools are widely available to mathematical illiterates. I think that some of my OR colleagues may feel threatened by the advent of OR in spreadsheets. This might be part of OR's reluctance to come to terms with spreadsheets.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> For example, some of my colleagues disregard spreadsheets because they are not the most "powerful" platform for OR. This observation has some validity, but now that a $600 PC has more power than a 15-year old supercomputer, it's not a major issue in most applications. Some of us dislike spreadsheets due to occasional difficulties with expressing OR models in spreadsheets. These difficulties are real, but they are an argument for doing research on spreadsheet modeling and spreadsheet OR, not for disdaining spreadsheets.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> Instructors in business school programs only reluctantly accepted spreadsheets for business school teaching. Many instructors still teach model formulation using the traditional algebraic notation, with the spreadsheet serving only as a computational engine. Precious few OR programs teach a course on OR in spreadsheets (with Stanford being a notable exception). As a profession, we should be grateful to those programs and faculty who have taken the lead in spreadsheet OR, because spreadsheets will certainly play an important role in OR's future.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=3><B>A Strategic Opportunity for OR</B></FONT><BR> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> Although spreadsheets have incredible power as a vehicle for OR, our profession has not thought strategically about them. But as INFORMS struggles with declining membership, decreased support from industry and public ignorance of OR, we need to consider how to make the spreadsheet revolution work to our advantage.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> Like many business school faculty, I got over my initial surprise at OR in spreadsheets, and I determined to empower technically-unskilled people to use OR well. This has been getting easier, as improvements in the software, particularly in the after-market Premium Solver, cleared up most of the minor quirks of the free Solver. Spreadsheet OR lets me concentrate on the "real" work of OR, which is solving practical problems. The experience of teaching business students has awakened me to a strategic opportunity for OR.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> The overwhelming success of spreadsheet modeling in business has a problemand to me, that problem looks like an opportunity for OR. The problem is that little is known about modeling and how to model effectively. There is very little research on modeling, and most of it pertains to expert modelers. Because of our ignorance of this fundamental skill, it is difficult to avoid the humbling conclusion that we elite modelers in the OR community perform our modeling using a combination of genetic endowment, dumb luck and hard-won experience, rather than through the application of the scientific method.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> The absence of research results on modeling means that teaching modeling is more difficult than it should be. The teaching of modeling that we do perform (or at least what has been written up in the literature) is based on an art studio approach where a master modeler assigns modeling problems, then critiques and guides journeymen modelers in an effort to speed up their acquisition of experience. This approach works well, but it is very expensive and challenging to execute well.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> The opportunity is clear, at least for OR teachers in business schools. Business students are hungry to learn to model. I've had students literally weeping in my office when they "got" how to express their business ideas in a spreadsheet model, because at that moment they ceased to be functionally innumerate. This may be the closest I ever get to changing someone's life. In my experience, business students who already have some skill at modeling (e.g., investment bankers, corporate business planners and high-end consultants) have many gaps in their knowledge and are eager to become faster and smarter about modeling. I sometimes can't get these people to close their laptops during class because they are pursuing some new spreadsheet modeling idea.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> Teaching modeling represents a magnificent opportunity for OR in business schools. We can 1. deliver highly valued lessons to business students, 2. enhance our students' ability to learn and apply the algorithms we really want to deliver, and 3. have more fun teaching.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> If we are successful, we will graduate large numbers of business leaders who understand modeling, and therefore have hands-on access to the power of OR. Unlike the business students of the past, trained in the algorithm-and-model tradition, these graduates are seeking opportunities to personally apply modeling and OR to advance their careers. As alumni, they will be advocates for business school OR courses. In industry, they are likely to become eager proponents of traditional client/consultant OR, and effective internal salespeople for OR projects. Such people would be a fantasy come true for the OR practice community.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> The strategic opportunity for OR is clear. Our challenge is to understand the mindset of ordinary, non-elite people (particularly business students), give them a foundation of effective, efficient spreadsheet modeling, outfit them with a few basic OR techniques, and send them off to try to conquer the world. In a future column, I'll present some suggestions for teaching business students how to be good modelers.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><I><B>Thomas A. Grossman</B> recently joined the University of San Francisco Business School, and has taught at the Haskayne and Tuck Schools of Business. He is editor of </I>INFORMS Case & Teaching Materials,<I> past president of the Education Forum and president of the Spreadsheet Productivity Research Interest Group.</i></font><BR>  <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=5 border=0><br>  <img src="../barblue.gif" width=468 height=1 border=0 alt=" "><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=8 border=0><br> <font face="verdana, arial, helvetica" size="1"> <CENTER><script type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> </script></CENTER><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=8 border=0><br> <LI> <A HREF="tocfr.html" Target="_top"><I>Table of Contents</A><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <LI> <A HREF="../../ORMS.shtml" TARGET="_top"><I>OR/MS Today</I> Home Page</A><br>  <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=8 border=0><br> <img src="../barblue.gif" width=468 height=1 border=0 alt=" "><br> <b><i>OR/MS Today</i></b> copyright © 2003 by <A HREF="http://www.informs.org/" target="_new">the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences</a>. 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