TITLE: Two pedagogical
challenges: teaching mathematical modeling and choosing performance measures

SPEAKER:  Professor Steve Pollock

ABSTRACt:

Developing mathematical models to describe (in some useful
way) operational situation  is a critical component of doing effective
Operations Research.  Yet, for most students, learning and internalizing
the craft (or art) of doing mathematical modeling is a difficult and
often mysterious journey.  And this struggle can actually be made worse by
using a normal classroom lecture-reading-studying mode of teaching. Moreover,
the pedagogical challenge to those who try to develop and hone students' abilities
to model is complicated when measures of performance normally used to judge
"success" in this educational process are either not clear or
possibly pernicious.  Indeed, choosing measures of performance for just
about any operational problems is often problematic.


The
talk will address these issues via personal experiences, anecdotes and
opinions.  Any formal mathematics presented or discussed will be
incidental, elementary or purposely unnecessarily complicated.


Biosketch:


Stephen M. Pollock is Herrick Emeritus Professor of
Manufacturing and Professor Emeritus of Industrial and Operations Engineering
at the University of Michigan.  He has been involved in applying
operations research and decision analysis methods to understand and influence
of a variety of operational phenomena involving: military search and detection,
criminal recidivism, manufacturing process monitoring, sequential allocation of
resources, predictive and proactive maintenance, sports, networks of queues,
the stochastic behavior of infectious disease epidemics and the optimization of
radiation oncology plans.

 

After
receiving his Ph.D. at M.I.T. in 1964 he was a member of the technical staff at
Arthur D. Little, Inc. before joining the faculty at the U.S. Naval
Postgraduate School in 1965 and the University of Michigan in 1969.  He
was chair of the IOE Department from 1981 through 1990.  In 1992 he was
the recipient of the Stephen S. Attwood Award, the highest honor awarded to a
faculty member by the College of Engineering. He has authored over 65 technical
papers, co-edited two books, and has served as a consultant to over 30
industrial, governmental and service organizations.

 

Professor
Pollock was Associate Editor and Area Editor of Operations Research,
Senior Editor of IIE Transactions, Associate Editor of Management
Science and on the editorial boards of other journals.  He has served
on various advisory boards for the National Science Foundation, on the Army
Science Board, and chaired and been member of many National Research Council
committees, boards and panels.  He was President of the Operations
Research Society of America in 1986 and awarded the 2001 INFORMS Kimball Medal
for contributions to operations research and the management sciences.  He
a fellow of INFORMS and the AAAS and is a member of the National Academy of
Engineering.