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<FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><B><I><A HREF="../../ORMS.shtml" TARGET="_top">OR/MS Today</A> - December 2002</I></B></font><BR>
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<FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><B>Issues in Education</B></FONT><br>
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<FONT SIZE="+2"><B>The Keys to the Vault</B></FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE="2"><I>This is the third in an occasional series of articles aimed at making management science the best course in the business school.</I></FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE="4"><I>Equipping business students with the knowledge to use management science.</I></FONT><BR>
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<FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><B>By Thomas A. Grossman</B></FONT><br>
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For the business school management science course to thrive, students need to know how to apply what we teach them. Business school deans — as well as their students and alumni — have no interest in courses that only prepare students to "appreciate" the work of OR/MS consultants. They demand courses that equip students with useful skills, and have been steadily cutting courses that don't meet these qualifications. We must think carefully about what skills we can provide.<BR>
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One approach is to argue that OR/MS is so powerful that we need merely show students how to use our techniques, and let them get on with it. Unfortunately, this doesn't work. Business school graduates struggle to apply OR/MS themselves. The reason is that we neglect to teach the fundamental prerequisites to OR/MS application: the skills of creating, expressing and evaluating a model. Without a model, OR/MS techniques are merely mathematics. The mathematics of OR/MS are useful because they allow us to extract insight from a model. The model is the foundation of OR/MS application, but our courses are based on the mistaken assumption that graduates have easy access to useful models. Oftentimes they don't, unless they create those models themselves.<BR>
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The typical business school management science course is a bit of a tease. It showcases OR/MS techniques, but doesn't deliver the ability to create the models to which those techniques can be applied. Students need the ability to create a model that usefully expresses the essential features of a complex business situation. This is the key that opens the vault of OR/MS riches.<BR>
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<FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=3><B>Modeling Is Difficult</B></FONT><BR>
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I believe that a major barrier to the success of OR/MS is that ordinary human beings are poor modelers. Modeling seems to be an innate ability in the OR/MS community. Because we are good at modeling, it is natural to assume that others are too. However, most people — including MBA students in competitive programs — don't have a natural talent for modeling. It is no trivial thing to express one's understanding as a mathematical model, even when working in the friendly spreadsheet-modeling environment.<BR>
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Therefore, we need to teach our students how to model. In particular, we need to teach them how to create a model from scratch. As Steve Powell put it ["Defining Success," <I>OR/MS Today,</I> August 2002, <A HREF="http://www.lionhrtpub.com/orms/orms-8-02/frpowell.html" TARGET="_top">www.lionhrtpub.com/orms/orms-8-02/frpowell.html</A>], this is "the ability to recognize a problem that can be modeled, and the ability to abstract enough of the essence of that problem into a model that will ultimately provide insight." Teaching students standard models such as the transportation problem doesn't hurt, but it's not enough. They need to acquire the skill of being able to model any of the unlimited number of problematic situations they may face in their business career.<BR>
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In teaching business students how to create a model, I discovered another critical skill. My students need to express their model effectively in a spreadsheet. But they tend to program wildly during the modeling process, creating messy "spaghetti code" that makes their models incomprehensible. So, like it or not, I have to teach them the foundations of spreadsheet engineering so their models actually work. Only then can we discuss modeling and business issues, not spreadsheet bugs.<BR>
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Another critical skill is to systematically explore, analyze and evaluate a model. Expert modelers know how to do this but beginners don't. Basic analytic skills — including establishing a base case and using a data table for sensitivity analysis — are essential for extracting insightful information. These concepts may be obvious to us, but they're big news to many business students — we have to teach them.<BR>
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Teaching students model creation, spreadsheet engineering and basic analytics has many benefits. The weak students can actually function in the world of numbers, and are grateful for it. The strong students get a richer understanding, and a few tricks they didn't know. Students obtain genuine access to OR/MS techniques. There is also an unanticipated benefit: there are many business situations where a clear, credible descriptive model is invaluable by itself — never mind applying the sophisticated tools of optimization or simulation. Someone who can model a tricky situation and bring clarity to a vexing problem is making a powerful contribution; we should teach our students how to do this. Students and alumni value this skill highly, and are not shy about communicating that to administrators and other faculty.<BR>
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<FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=3><B>The Three Keys</B></FONT><BR>
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Students need three keys to unlock the vault guarding the OR/MS treasure trove of techniques: model creation (developing a useful model from scratch); spreadsheet engineering (expressing their modeling ideas effectively); and, basic analytics (systematically extracting insight from a model). With these keys in their pocket, students have access to the riches of OR/MS techniques. Without these keys, our courses risk giving students only a glimpse of the treasure, then slamming the door in their face.<BR>
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In future articles I'll discuss simple ways to get started teaching modeling, spreadsheet engineering and basic analytics.<BR>
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<CENTER><font color="#990000" size="3" face="verdana, arial, helvetica"><B>Further Reading</B></font></CENTER><BR>
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Reasons to teach modeling and basic analysis: Powell, Stephen, 2001, "Teaching Modeling in Management Science," <I>INFORMS Transactions on Education,</I> Vol. 1. No. 2, <A HREF="http://ite.informs.org/Vol1No2/powell/powell.html" TARGET="_new">http://ite.informs.org/Vol1No2/powell/powell.html</A>.<BR>
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Spreadsheet engineering is needed because spreadsheets are riddled with errors: Panko, Raymond, 1998, "What We Know About Spreadsheet Errors," <I>Journal of End User Computing,</I> Vol. 10, No. 2, pgs. 15-21; extended version at <A HREF="http://panko.cba.hawaii.edu/ssr/Mypapers/whatknow.htm" TARGET="_new">http://panko.cba.hawaii.edu/ssr/Mypapers/whatknow.htm</A>.<BR>
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Equipping students to be effective modelers without spreadsheets: Liberatore, Matthew, and Robert Nydick, 1999, "The Teachers' Forum: Breaking the Mold — A New Approach to Teaching the First MBA Course in Management Science," <I>Interfaces,</I> Vol. 29, No. 4, pgs. 99-116.
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<CENTER><font color="#990000" size="3" face="verdana, arial, helvetica"><B>Editor's Note:</B></font></CENTER><BR>
<font size="2" face="verdana, arial, helvetica">"Issues In Education" is a regular column sponsored by INFORM-ED, the INFORMS Forum on Education. The column provides educators with practical, useful and thoughtful ideas as they relate to issues in OR/MS education. Educators interested in contributing to the column should contact the column editor, Robert Nydick of Villanova University, at <A HREF="mailto:robert.nydick@villanova.edu"><A HREF="mailto:robert.nydick@villanova.edu">robert.nydick@villanova.edu</A></A>.<BR>
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<FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><I>Thomas A. Grossman (<A HREF="mailto:thomas.grossman@haskayne.ucalgary.ca">thomas.grossman@haskayne.ucalgary.ca</A>) is an associate professor at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada. Grossman acknowledges Stephen G. Powell of the Tuck School at Dartmouth for his guidance.</i><BR>
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<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>. All rights reserved.<br>
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