Operations Research Management Science - ORacle

<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> - February 2004</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>ORacle</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>Rush Limbaugh's Parable</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 Douglas A. Samuelson</B></FONT><br> <hr size="1"> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br>    "Wow! That was some Super Bowl!" the OR/MS analyst exclaimed as the game winning field goal ended it. <P>"This is one time the party stayed focused on the game," his wife Anne agreed. "Even I thought it was exciting." <P>"Great party, Don, Anne," said Fred, an analyst and guest. Then he inquired slyly, "Now, honestly, how many of us, back in September, would have picked these two teams to be in it?" <P>"The Patriots, maybe," Jim, another guest, chimed in, "but Carolina? I still thought the Eagles would <I>win last week!"</I> <P>"Well, at least you didn't call Donovan McNabb 'overrated' right before the Philadelphia Eagles went on that big winning streak," Don consoled him. There was a chorus of groans and derisive laughter. They all knew what the host meant: Political commentator Rush Limbaugh, somehow miscast as a football analyst, had stuck his foot into the subject  and his mouth  in October when he claimed that McNabb, the Eagle's quarterback, was being "hyped" by "liberal media" simply because he is black. <P>"Funny thing about that," Jim added. "Rush Limbaugh said lots of other equally stupid things, making up facts and twisting logic to support his ideologically based opinions, for, what, 12 or 13 years? And nobody ever nailed him for it until that one. Why not?" <P>"It's not as if nobody noticed," Fred objected. "There was a book, 'Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot,' right? By Al Franken, wasn't it? I think it sold pretty well." <P>"Yeah," Jim acknowledged, "but there was never anything like the public outcry the McNabb thing generated. When Limbaugh first came on TV, I watched a couple of shows, just to see what all the commotion was about. At one point he started talking about AIDS research, and he said, 'You know all this money trying to find a cure for AIDS is just wasted. AIDS is caused by a virus. You can't cure viral diseases  the common cold is caused by a virus, and they've never found a cure for that. The only expenditure that makes sense is educating people about the lifestyle.'" Jim was promptly rewarded with new chorus of groans. <P>"How many mistakes can you make in one paragraph?" Fred laughed. "I guess he'd never heard of the polio vaccine." <P>"Or smallpox," Don added quickly. "Or the difference between cures and vaccines. Or flu, which <I>does</I> respond to a couple of antibiotics if you hit it early enough." <P>"And there were no cures for bacterial diseases, either, until somebody found them," Jim noted. "But we know why what he said was stupid. What's interesting is, why didn't he get taken apart for that and a whole bunch of other stuff like it, the way he did for the stuff about football?" <P>"OK, I'll ask," Don grinned. "What's your theory?" <P>Jim smiled. "The difference is, with football, everyone in the audience had fast access to very good information about the subject! You can get complete statistics on the game and the whole season in the next day's paper, or online almost immediately after the game. The people who wrote and called in were saying things like, 'McNabb went to the Pro Bowl three times in the last four years. He had one of the highest passing ratings in the league and led the team in rushing, too. There are seven other black quarterbacks starting or alternating at starter, and they're not getting the same media treatment, because they haven't done what he has.' In short, <I>this time his whole audience could be confident, very quickly, that they knew more than he did!"</I> <P>"Hmm," Fred responded, suddenly serious. "That might explain an experience I had a couple of months ago. I hadn't thought of it this way, but I think I see something here. <P>"I was giving a briefing to some of our clients about OR/MS approaches to solving complex problems," he continued. "Naturally, I was telling them OR/MS can help with just about anything. But when I got into the details of this one problem they were having, I ran into trouble! None of them could understand the whole system, as I was pretty sure I could, but each of them knew something important about it that I didn't. Once a few of them had spoken up, they all decided I didn't know enough about their subject to help them!" <P>"Yeah, that's your profession's problem, all right," Anne laughed. "You're great at assembling the big picture, but often at the expense of details. But if you get details wrong, the people who know those details object. If you get enough of those specialists together at once, with enough information at their fingertips, they can gang up on you. When are you going to take your own advice?" <P>"Which advice is that, dear?" Don inquired. <P>"It's all about the information!" Anne explained. "You only look like an expert if you know more of the really important stuff than they do  and knowing which is the really important stuff is the most important knowledge of all!"<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>Doug Samuelson</B> is president of InfoLogix, Inc., a research and development and consulting firm in Annandale, Va., and an adjunct faculty member at The George Washington University and the University of Pennsylvania.</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 © 2004 by <A HREF="http://www.informs.org/" target="_new">the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences</a>. 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