October 1996 € Volume 23 € Number 5

Profile:
Dueling Time

By Peter Horner

Every day, month after month, Leslie Marx faced the same perplexing problem: How do you create time?

As the top-ranked women's épée fencer in the country with a once-in-a-lifetime date at the Olympics looming on the horizon, Marx craved time to hone her fencing skills and travel to far-flung competitions. As an assistant professor of economics and management at the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester, Marx craved time to prepare for class and to pursue her research. As a young wife and member of the human species, Marx craved time for family, friends and, well, the freedom to not do anything.

The problem, of course, is beyond intractable. There are only 24 hours in a day. And you thought Olympic 200 and 400 meter champ Michael Johnson faced a difficult double.

"Insane" is one word Marx, an INFORMS member, uses to describe the past year, a year that saw her travel more than 100,000 miles and visit more cities than an IOC official on an unlimited expense account. On more Fridays than she would care to remember, Marx flew off to Havana, Budapest or Katowice, Poland, for a weekend competition, then spent all day Monday flying back to Rochester in time for class on Tuesday.

The generous support of her husband &emdash; fellow fencer, coach and five-time Olympian Michael Marx &emdash; and her Simon School colleagues made the juggling act possible, but no more palatable.

"Every day, every hour was a compromise," Marx says. "If I had an hour, should I spend it fencing, doing research or doing what I really needed, which was getting another hour of sleep? I think that hour of sleep would have improved everything else."

Somehow, Marx made it through the school year and she made it to Atlanta for the Olympics. Seeded 23rd, she exceeded expectations by finishing 16th in her event, the women's individual épée. Her victims included 10th seeded Maarika Vosu of Estonia.

So what was her most memorable Olympics experience?

"Athletes always answer that question by saying that marching in the opening ceremonies or staying in the village with the other athletes was the best thing about participating in the Olympics," Marx says. "To me, the most exciting part &emdash; the reason we were all there in the first place &emdash; was the competition itself. To finally have the opportunity to compete in the Olympics after working so hard for so many years to get there was wonderful."


Different strokes
For the uninitiated, an épée is a thin sword with no cutting edge that tapers to point. In contrast, saber, another Olympic fencing discipline, involves a blade-like weapon. The saber event is modeled after a cavalry charge; épée is a duel to first blood. Saber bouts are generally over in a minute or two; an épée bout almost always goes the nine-minute distance. Different strokes for different people. Braveheart vs. Zorro.

A 15-touch, nine-minute épée bout provides plenty of opportunities for fencers to employ strategy and, in the case of Leslie Marx, game theory, her area of research.

"Fencing can be a sophisticated application of game theory," she says. "During the course of a bout, you try to influence your opponent's beliefs about what you're going to do. At the same time, you're constantly updating your own beliefs about what your opponent is going to do. So the strategies are fairly complex, especially in the longer bouts.

"In a 15-touch épée bout, you have to think long term, not just scoring the next point. You have to think about what you're revealing to your opponent. Sometimes you'll try to disguise a successful action early on so you'll be able to use that action for a longer period of time.

"Once you get ahead, of course, you try to stall. The bouts are timed. But you have to be careful because stalling forces your opponent to try new things. Sometimes they discover something that works pretty well. Sometimes you might be better off not forcing them to be more courageous."

Time magazine featured Marx in a July 22, 1996, article headlined "More than Athletes." The article profiled a handful of Olympians who, "despite the demands of their sport É find success and fulfillment outside of the arena." The Time article, combined with her Olympic odyssey, brought considerable attention to Marx and the Simon School of Business.

"The people at the Simon School were really happy for me," Marx says. "They said it made watching the Olympics more exciting, knowing that I was there competing. My students (she teaches decision analysis to MBAs) were really excited, too. Even though all of my traveling leading up to the Games made it difficult for me to see them during office hours, they were very understanding and supportive. Whenever I came back from a trip, they always asked a lot of questions about the competition and how I did."

Marx first drew a sword as an undergraduate at Duke Univerity. She took a P.E. class in fencing because she was "looking for the most exotic" sport she could find, one that challenged the mind as well as the body. Fencing fit the bill.


Foiled again
She met her future husband, Michael, at a fencing tournament at Duke. At the time, Michael was a national champion and Olympian in men's foil (don't ask).

"Michael was traveling to all of these fencing competitions," Leslie says. "I wanted to be supportive of him, but I didn't want to just sit there and watch. So I started to compete as well. And I started having success."

Michael, who also competed at the Atlanta Games, served as Leslie's primary coach through the Olympics. Having your husband as your coach can create some dicey situations on the home front. Michael and Leslie have decided not to push their luck; she plans to start working with another coach.

Does that mean Leslie has her sights set on the 2000 Games in Sydney?

"I don't know," she sighs, no doubt recalling the hectic pace of the last year. "Right now, it is much more important for me to get tenure than to make the 2000 team. I'm making my research my top priority. The plan is to see what happens over the next couple of years, and then decide whether to get back up to speed for Sydney."

Professor Marx's current research focuses on Nasdaq markets and the behavior of market makers (the people who maintain bid and ask quotes on the computer system) and free-rider problems among firms involved in joint arrangements with no formal constraints.

"I'm working on incremental contribution games for public goods," she says. "Are there equilibria that allow you to overcome free-riding problems in the production of public goods? An example might be a research joint venture where you have several firms that contribute to a project and the output of the project is to be shared by all. You end up with free-rider problems where each firm has incentives to shirk if it can avoid penalties."

While Marx's Simon School colleagues were supportive of her drive for the Olympics, no one turned off her tenure clock.

"That was risky on my part," she says of her decision to juggle research and fencing. "I would be father along in my research, but I wouldn't have been able to go to the Olympics."

Now that the Olympics are over, now that she's no longer "en garde" and a new school year has started, she's anxious to make up for lost time. After the year's she's had, no one is more expert at finding time than Leslie Marx. Touché!

Peter Horner is the editor of OR/MS Today