August 1996 € Volume 23 € Number 4

Battle of Wits

OR/MS Veterans Put To The Test At Second Knowledge Bowl

What does the acronym SIRO stand for? Can you name the only two-time winner of the Lanchester Prize? Did Alfred Nobel's wife have an affair with a Swedish mathematician, thereby ruining forever any chance of a Nobel Prize in mathematics?

Inquiring minds want to know.

So do operations research trivia buffs, aficionados of the truly obscure, and those just searching for a little knowledge and a lot of laughs. They all enjoyed a field day at the OR/MS Knowledge Bowl held during the INFORMS meeting in Washington, D.C. The "Bowl" featured glib game show host Saul Gass firing a series of questions at two teams of distinguished OR/MS veterans. Arjang Assad and Mike Bell of the University of Maryland served as judges while Arilea Sofer of George Mason University kept score.

For the record, the East team comprised of Robert Machol (captain), Al Blumstein, Carl Harris and John D.C. Little edged the West team of Gene Woolsey (captain), Leon Lasden, Paul Gray and Hugh Miser in a four-round, see-saw battle of wits and recall that wasn't decided until the final question.

For the benefit of those not in attendance, following is a list of questions Gass composed for the occasion. You will be graded.

Questions

1. The famous game theory problem, The Prisoner's Dilemma, was invented in 1950 by two mathematicians at the Rand Corporation. One of them was the second president of TIMS. Name the inventors.

2. What famous mathematician, who won the von Neumann Prize in 1980, gave the name to The Prisoner's Dilemma?

3. Name the one person who has won the Lanchester Prize twice?

4. Following are the names of three business schools. Name the universities where they are located.

Katz Graduate School
Simon School of Business
Fuqua School of Business

5. The following quote is the very first sentence in the first chapter of what book? "Operations research is a scientific method of providing executive departments with a quantitative basis for decisions regarding the operations under their control."

6. In their two-volume work on "Management Models and Industrial Applications of Linear Programming," Charnes and Cooper describe and name an integer-programming idea due to Dantzig. They called it the Dantzig Cut. What is it and why did Dantzig say, "That is the unkindest cut of all."

7. The person whose name is synonymous with total quality management was the famous local Washington statistician W. Edwards Deming. What does the W. stand for?

8. Who is the long-time and current Book Review Editor for Interfaces?

9. Two questions on Euler's famous bridges of Koenigsberg problem:

10. OR is quite notorious for its use of abbreviations. It turns out that the real world uses some of the same abbreviations, but they have a different meaning. Following are three OR abbreviations and their meaning. What are the related real-world meanings?

LP -- linear programming;
DP -- dynamic programming;
B&B -- branch and bound

11. (Know-your-enemy question for the East) Some members of the West team have authored and/or co-authored books. Name two West team authors and their books?

12. (Know-your-enemy question for the West) Some members of the East team have authored and/or co-authored books. Name two East team authors and their books?

13. Parker Brothers marketed a game called "Hex" in 1952; it was played on a board with hexagonal cells. The original version of the game was developed and played at Princeton where it was sometimes called "John," as it was played on the hexagonal tiles found on the bathroom floors. The inventor of the game won the von Neumann Prize (jointly) in 1978. Who is the inventor?

14. The first French language book on linear programming appeared in 1962 and was translated into English by William Jewell in 1966 (Prentice-Hall). Who was the French author?

15. Turnpike theorems deal with which of the following areas:

vehicle routing
planning horizons
the information highway
traveling salesman problem

16. George Dantzig may be said to be the world's father of linear programming. Here are two other "who-is-the-father-of" questions.

Who is called the British father of linear programming, as he is credited with introducing the subject in the United Kingdom?
Who is called the father of OR in Spain?

17. What class of problems are associated with Gilmore and Gomory?

18. In 1974, there was a special edition of Operations Research dedicated to Ellis Johnson; in 1983 Ellis Johnson won the Lanchester Prize. Are they the same person, and if not, identify them?

19. The 15th Mathematical Programming Symposium was held in Ann Arbor, Mich., in 1995. The 16th will be held in Lausanne in 1997. The symposia count begins with the first one that is numbered 0. Where and in what year was the first one held?

20. When we hear of Just-in-Time we usually associate it with the Japanese word kanban. What does kanban mean?

21. George Brown and Julia Robinson are noted for doing work on the same problem.
What was the problem and what did each do?

22. We all know that FIFO stands for first in, first out; and LIFO stands for last in, first out.
What does SIRO stand for?

23. In the latest March-April 1996 issue of Interfaces, the editor, Mike Rothkopf, had an editorial titled: "Which Universities Contribute to the Practice Literature?" Mike counted the number of papers by university affiliation of the authors in the Operations Research Practice Section, papers in Interfaces and columns in Interfaces. People on this stage represent three of the top five universities.
Who are they and what are the universities?

24. MIT was first in Rothkopf's article, which university was second?

25. Shown are five figures (diagrams). State the problem each figure relates to. If the figure is named after someone, state who that person is.

Figure A

Figure B

Figure C

Figure D

Figure E

26. G. H. Hardy in "A Mathematician's Apology," (Cambridge University Press, 1941, p. 150.) wrote: "I have never done anything 'useful.' No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world Judged by all practical standards, the value of my mathematical life is nil; and outside mathematics it is trivial anyhow."
The question is, what does the "G" stand for?

27. (Know-your-enemy question for the East) For many years, Tom Caywood was a principle in a consulting firm. It was known as Caywood- "something" Associates. What was the something and where was the company headquarters located?

28. (Know-your-enemy question for the West) When the Johns Hopkins Operations Research Office closed down, its functions were taken over by another company. Which member of the East Team worked for the takeover company and what was the name of the company?

29. Consider the following Markov chain problem: Imagine 1,000 lilypads arranged in a circle, numbered 0 through 999. Suppose a frog begins on lilypad number 0 and proceeds as follows. Each minute, she jumps either to the pad immediately to her right, or to the pad immediately to her left, or hops (stays) on the pad she's already on, each with probability 1/3. Thus, after one minute she is equally likely to be on pad 999, pad 0 or pad 1. After two minutes, she has probability 1/9 of being at pad 998 or pad 2, probability 2/9 of being at pad 999 or pad 1, and probability 3/9 of being at pad 0. How many minutes or hours or days will have to elapse so that the frog has approximately equal probability of being at any of the 1,000 pads?

30. In the old days we use to refer to the Kuhn-Tucker conditions? What do we call the conditions today and why?

31. The Kuhn-Tucker conditions appeared in a famous paper titled "Nonlinear Programming" given at a 1950 conference. In what book did the paper first appear and who was its editor?

32. Name the person credited with the development of the following OR techniques:

33. The following are acronyms from the optimization field. What exactly do they represent?

34. As of May 7, 1996, how many countries are members of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS)?

35. There is a theorem that shows how one can transform an integer-programming problem with linear constraints into a knapsack problem. What is the name given to the method, who originated the method, and in what century was it first proposed?

36. Many economists, physicists and others who have worked in OR/MS have won Nobel Prizes. We can think of Shockley, Koopmans, Kantorovich and, more recently, Nash. Nash is a mathematician and studied under Al Tucker at Princeton. It is rare that a mathematician wins a Nobel Prize as there is no Nobel Prize in mathematics. I heard the rumor that this is because the famous Swedish mathematician (Mittlag-Leffler) had an affair with Nobel's wife.
Is the rumor true or false?

37. The first successful commercial linear programming code that incorporated the product form of the revised simplex method was written by Bill Orchard-Hays. On what computer was it run?

38. When you hear that someone is using the golden section and Fibonacci numbers, that person could be an artist or a botanist or a mathematician. From an OR perspective, that person would be doing what?

39. What company is credited with introducing the kanban system for inventory control?

40. A greedy algorithm is a heuristic algorithm for solving a specific optimization problem based on the structure of the problem and the insight of the algorithm developer. A characteristic of a greedy algorithm is that once you make a step, you never go back and change it -- it never undoes what it did earlier. That is, you do what appears to be the best at each step and do not worry about tomorrow. An expert chess player does not use a greedy algorithm. Some greedy algorithms converge to the optimum solution. Which of the following greedy algorithms will always yield (converge) to an optimum solution?

Vogel's method (VAM) for the transportation problem
Kruskal's algorithm for the minimal spanning tree problem
Prim's algorithm for the minimal spanning tree problem
Graham's decreasing-time-list algorithm for assigning jobs to machines

41. According to a recent report by Computerworld, MIT's Sloan School was the No. 1 MBA program for what they termed the Techno MBA. What school was rated No. 2?

42. A recent issue of OR/MS Today showed a rendition of Marilyn Monroe with her skirts flying somewhat above her ankles. This is not the first instance that us old-time members of ORSA/TIMS/INFORMS have been exposed to such racy material. Here is a copy of the cover of the April 1968 TIMS/ORSA meeting bulletin. In what city was it held in and who was the committee chair person who selected the cover?

43. For the 1968 TIMS meeting, what was the registration fee for ORSA and TIMS members? (Exact cost)

44. What is the Military Operations Research Society's quarterly bulletin called?

45. The 1995 annual report of the American Mathematical Association stated yearly median starting salary of new doctoral recipients in teaching. Within + or - $2,000, what was the figure?

46. If this INFORMS Washington, D.C., Spring 1996 Meeting was a continuation of the joint ORSA and TIMS national meetings, would it have been designated the ORSA/TIMS or the TIMS/ORSA National Meeting?

47. (Know-your-enemy question for the East team) Leon Lasdon is the principle developer of a nonlinear programming code. What is the name of the code (method)?

48. (Know-your-enemy question for the West team) A member of the East team received an honorary degree form the University of Liege, Belgium. Who is he?

49. Herb Simon and Allen Newell are famous for many things. In 1957 they gave a talk at the Twelfth National Meeting of ORSA in Pittsburgh. The paper was presented by Simon, but its contents have been published in Operations Research and reprinted elsewhere. The title of the paper is "Heuristic Problem Solving: The Next Advance in Operations Research." In that paper they predict three things by stating "That within 10 years a digital computer will " What are those things?

50. Who was the first person to develop a linear-programming problem that cycled under the standard rules of the simplex method?

51. The 1975 Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to two people who were associated with operations research. What are their names?

52. The competition for the 25th Franz Edelman Award for Management Science Achievement was held at the INFORMS Washington, D.C., Spring 1996 Meeting. Franz Edelman was responsible for management sciences at what company?

53. Who won last year's (1995) Franz Edelman Award?

54. Volume 1, number 1 of a new journal called Heuristics was published in the Fall of 1995. Who is the editor-in-chief?

55. What company won the first prize in the first Franz Edelman competition.

56. Most of us know that PERT was developed as an aid to managing the Polaris Missile Project. About the same time, CPM was also developed. Which one of the following companies is associated with the origins of CPM?

IBM
DuPont Chemical
UNIVAC
ESSO Oil

57. The Delphi method was developed as a means of converging the opinions of individuals or groups. Which one of the following organizations is associated with its development?

Mitre Corp.
The RAND Corp.
Battelle Institute
Arthur D. Little Corp.

58. The year the Argentineans invaded the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands, the International Federations of Operational Research Societies (IFORS) was scheduled to meet in Buenos Aries. Due to pressure by the British, the meeting was moved to what city?

59. What is the meaning of the following acronyms

MAUT
MOLP
MCDM

60. Who is credited with inventing the field of fuzzy sets?

Answers

1. Merrill Flood (President of TIMS, 1955) and Melvin Dresher. Source: Poundstone's Prisoner's Dilemma

2. Albert Tucker Source: Poundstone's Prisoner's Dilemma

3. George Nemhauser; 1977 and 1989.

4. U. of Pittsburgh (Katz); U. of Rochester (Simon); Duke (Fuqua)

5. "Methods of Operations Research," Morse and Kimball

6. x NONBASIC > 1. It was shown by Alan Hoffman and Ralph Gomory that it did not work.

7. William

8. Ben Lev

9. (a) Seven; (b) No. Source: Ore, Graphs and Their Uses.

10. LP -- liquid propane (long-playing, as in long-playing alblum, was also accepted); B&B -- Benedictine and Brandy. (Bed & Breakfast was also accepted); DP -- displaced person (also Latin-House of Lords)

11. Lasdon: "Optimization Theory for Large Systems"; Miser: "Handbook of Systems Analysis," vols. I and II (with Quade); Woolsey: "Quick and Dirty OR"

12. Harris: "Fundamentals of Queueing Theory" (with Gross); Machol: "Elementary Systems Mathematics: Linear Programming for the Business and the Social Sciences"

13. John Nash (von Neumann prize with Carleton Lemke) Source: Pondstone's Prisoner's Dilemma

14. Michel Simonnard

15. Planning horizons. Turnpike is expansion path of the von Neumann Proportional Growth Program (Radner: "Notes on Economic Theory," 1963.)

16. Stephen Vajda (U.K); Sixto Rios-Insua (Spain)

17. One-dimensional cutting stock problems

18. 1974 - Ellis A. Johnson, director of the Johns Hopkins Operations Research Office. (See vol. 21, no. 6, 1974); 1983 - Ellis L. Johnson, formerly a mathematician with IBM and now professor at Georgia Tech.

19. Chicago, 1949 Cowles Commission Conference

20. Card(s)

21. George Brown: Invented the fictitious play method for solving zero-sum 2-person games. Julia Robinson: Proved that the fictitious play method converges.

22. SIRO: Service in random order

23. MIT -- John Little; University of Texas-Austin -- Leon Lasdon; University of Maryland at College Park -- Saul Gass

24. Stanford

25. (a) Traveling salesman problem; (b) Shewart control chart (quality control); (c) Transportation problem; (d) Voronoi diagram (dividing plane into areas whose points are closest to the given points); (e) PERT/CPM (project scheduling)

26. Godfrey (Harold)

27. Caywood-Schiller (Associates)/Chicago

28. Carl Harris/Research Analysis Corp.(RAC)

29. Approximately 122,302 minutes; Approximately 2,038 hours; Approximately 85 days (1440 minutes day) Rosenthal, J. S. "Convergence Rates of Markov Chains," SIAM Review, 37, 3, 1995

30. Karush-Kuhn-Tucker; Karush had the results in his unpublished master's thesis (1939) and they were independently discovered by Kuhn and Tucker in 1951.

31. "Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability," edited by Jerzy Neyman.

32. (a) Jay Forrester; (b) Robert Brown; (c) Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes; (d) Fred Glover

33. (a) General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS); (b) A Modeling Language for Mathematical Programming (AMPL); (c) Backward Transformation (BTRAN)

34. 44

35. Aggregation Process; Mathews, J. B. 1897; "On the partitioning of numbers," Proceedings of the London Mathematics Society, 28, 486490.

36. False. Nobel was a confirmed bachelor.

37. IBM 701; O-H. Source: Interfaces, 20, 4, 61-73.

38. Solving an optimization problem by search techniques.

39. Toyota

40. Kruskal's algorithm for the minimal spanning tree problem and Prim's algorithm for the minimal spanning tree problem

41. Carnegie Mellon University (OR/MS Today, Feb. 1995)

42. San Francisco; Ernest Koenigsberg.

43. $15

44. Phalanx

45. $35,000 (OR/MS Today, February 1995)

46. TIMS/ORSA National Meeting

47. GRG -- Generalized Reduced Gradient

48. John D.C. Little

49. Be the world's chess champion, unless the rules bar it from competition; Discover and prove an important new mathematical theorem; Write music that will be accepted by critics as possessing considerable aesthetic value.

50. Alan Hoffman

51. T.C. Koopmans; L.V. Kantorovich

52. RCA

53. Harris Corporation -- Semiconductor Sector, Melbourne, Fla.

54. Fred Glover, University of Colorado

55. Pillsbury Corp. (1972)

56. DuPont Chemical

57. The RAND Corp.

58. Washington, D.C.

59. Multiattribute Utility Theory (MAUT); Multiobjective Linear Programming (MOLP); Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM)

60. Lotfi Zadeh, University of California, Berkeley

Scoring (# of correct answers)

(50-60) Total Recall

(40-49) Trivia Hall of Famer

(30-39) INFORMS presidential timber

(20-29) INFORMS veteran

(10-19) Welcome to INFORMS

(0-9) Go back to grad school

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