OR/MS Today - February 1999 - Issues in Education

February 1999

Spreadsheets Will Not Save OR/MS!

By Thomas G. Groleau

First of all, I like spreadsheets. I've even attended one of Sam Savage's seminars and tested his materials in class. However, spreadsheets will not guarantee OR/MS a place in the business curriculum any more than LINDO's ease of use "saved" us in the 1980s. Our real problem is a quality control classic: We're focusing on process improvement rather than defective inputs. Too many students come to us as mathematical illiterates.

The February 1997 OR/MS Today reported on a survey of OR/MS teachers and MBA administrators.[3] Forty-nine percent of the teachers said better student math backgrounds would strengthen OR/MS programs, and 77 percent said weak math backgrounds were a "principle problem."

However, when administrators were asked what changes were planned, answers focused on modeling, cases, computer use and spreadsheets. All good things, but no mention of increasing math skills. At the end of the article, task force recommendations were listed and, again, none addressed math skills.

I've personally experienced this polarized view when butting heads with administrators about admissions and pre-requisites. In an effort to be relevant and "customer friendly," some have confused popularity with quality. Thus this article is not a criticism of spreadsheets (or cases, or modeling, or ...). It's a defense of mathematics.

Why study math?

Business Week [1] states that employers reward traditional "reading, writing and mathematical skills" because of their short supply. In contrast to overall wage stagnation for college grads, workers with high-level skills in these basic areas have seen real wage growth of 20 percent to 25 percent since the 1970s. This is in spite of the notion that traditional symbol manipulation skills have no relevance to real problems. Why would such skills be rewarded? I'll address that by analogy.

Martial arts training in the sixth century started with the Horse Stance — legs wide apart, knees bent, back straight. Students would hold this uncomfortable position for up to an hour and simply concentrate.[2] However, the Horse Stance doesn't show up in combat. I've seen plenty of "Kung Fu" flicks, and never seen Chuck Norris use the Horse Stance in a fight.

So what was the Horse Stance's value? It built stamina, strength, balance and concentration, all vitally important combat skills. Perhaps more important, it weeded out those unwilling or unable to pay the price to learn the secrets of the martial arts masters. While today's martial arts students don't face the Horse Stance, they still endure rigorous (and often tedious) foundational training.

A traditional math curriculum can do the same for us. Algebra, geometry, calculus, etc. provide a skill foundation for OR/MS. Students who don't understand basic algebra tend to struggle with spreadsheets — the concept of absolute versus relative cell reference confuses them. On the other hand, students who understand traditional math tend to pick up spreadsheet skills with relative ease.

Most of my MBA statistics students are mid-career professionals. Many haven't studied math in years and demonstrate weak basic skills. Therefore I developed a course based on cases and spreadsheets. Almost everything that would resemble traditional, symbolic mathematics is eliminated. Even so, those who start with weak math skills tend to finish with weak statistical understanding. I can't claim a causal relationship, but the association is clear.

I'm uncomfortable giving some of these students the modeling power of spreadsheets when I doubt that they understand them. "Ethics in Modeling" [4] includes several essays on the dangers of giving decision-makers powerful but poorly understood models. If we allow students to substitute spreadsheets for mathematical understanding, are we adding to the problem?

On the other hand, when teaching undergraduate finite math, I attempt to use spreadsheets to expand on standard topics already presented and practiced in a more traditional form. If I succeed, these students will enter upper divisional OR/MS courses proficient with both the powerfully compact language of mathematics and the modeling power of spreadsheets — a definite win-win combination.

The overlooked allies

Problems with student math skills are not unique to OR/MS. When I taught a pre-MBA math refresher, I surveyed faculty about the math skills their students should have. Economics and finance teachers consistently asked for more math than POM and OR/MS teachers. We need to join these colleagues within the business school to demand higher math standards for our programs.

Then we need to reach across the communication gap between the OR/MS and math communities. At the University of Kentucky, undergraduate business majors took college algebra, applied calculus, finite math and statistics before any course from Decision Science and Information Systems. MBA admission required college algebra, applied calculus and statistics. However, in the seven years I spent at UK there was not a single meeting between the math and DSIS departments about the content or rigor of those courses.

Tomorrow's OR/MS teachers, researchers, practitioners and educated end-users will all come to us with some type of math education. The fate of OR/MS in the 21st century will rise or fall with the quality of that education. Will we wait and see what we get or will we take an active role in demanding high standards and shaping the skills of these students?

References

Koretz, Gene, 1997, "Economic Trends: The Sheepskin Paradox," Business Week, October 6, pp. 30.
Ribner, S. and R. Chin, 1978, "The Martial Arts," Harper & Row Publishers, New York.
Task Force Report, 1997, "OR/MS and MBAs: Mediating the Mismatches," OR/MS Today, 24(1), pp. 36-41.
Wallace, W., 1994, "Ethics in Modeling," Elsevier Science Ltd., New York.

Thomas G. Groleau is an assistant professor of business at Bethel College in Indiana. He can be reached via e-mail at: groleat@bethel-in.edu.

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