OR-Notes
OR-Notes are a series of introductory notes on topics that fall under
the broad heading of the field of operations research (OR). They were originally
used by me in an introductory OR course I give at Imperial College. They
are now available for use by any students and teachers interested in OR
subject to the following conditions.
A full list of the topics available in OR-Notes can be found here.
OR resources on the Web tutorial
This tutorial aims to illustrate to you the wealth of OR resources (freely
available) on the web. After you leave Imperial you may one day find that
you have what you think is an OR problem, yet you need someone to give
you some advice. Finding people/companies with expertise in particular
areas is something that the Web enables you to do (with a bit of practice!).
Hence log-on to the server. If you do not have a valid log-on id for
our server see the person taking the class.
Then using the web browser (Netscape or Internet Explorer) access my
OR-Notes and
use the OR on the
Web section to:
- find a Web page that discusses OR as applied to yield management in
the airline industry
- find a Web page that discusses OR as applied to yield management in
the hotel industry
- find a Web page that discusses OR as applied to debt collection
- find the Web pages associated with the American OR Society (INFORMS)
conference held in Seattle in 1998 and look at the variety of topics presented
there
- and finally, just to see if you have a namesake in cyberspace, see
if you can find a Web page that mentions someone with exactly the
same name as you
Note:
- If you are new to web searching it helps (if you are unsuccessful at
finding what you want) to try different search engines and to vary the
keywords that you type in. Finding useful resources on the Web is an art
- there is plenty there but getting to what you want can be a time-consuming
process.
- As with many things after some practice you tend to develop habits
that make searching the web more productive. For example you might want
to use the right mouse button to open new windows so that as information
downloads in one window you can be continuing your work in another window.
- For OR specific queries a good place to start is often the INFORMS
web site (www.informs.org), before moving on to the general search
engines.