Sports leagues face a difficult task in creating a fair game schedule for their teams. Scheduling dates for sporting events is one of the first things that can go wrong in a season. By using optimization strategies, leagues can maximize their potential and fans can reap the benefits. Sports fans
Linear programming (LP) and mixed integer linear programming (MILP) solvers are powerful tools. Many real-world business problems, including facility location, production planning, job scheduling, and vehicle routing, naturally lead to linear optimization models. Sometimes a model that is not quite linear can be transformed to an equivalent linear model to reduce
Note from Udo Sglavo on mathematical optimization: When data scientists look at the essence of analytics and wonder about their daily endeavor, it often comes down to supporting better decisions. Peter F. Drucker, the founder of modern management, stated: "Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision."
It's been a great ride Since 2014, the Operations Research Blog has covered a broad range of topics related to real applications of operations research. Paraphrasing Principal Product Manager for Optimization Ed Hughes' first post - this blog covered how OR methods could be applied to organizational and business planning
A note from Udo Sglavo: This post offers an introduction to complex optimization problems and the sophisticated algorithms SAS provides to solve them. In previous posts of this series, we learned that data availability, combined with more and cheaper computing power, creates an essential opportunity for decision-makers. After looking at network analytics
A year ago we could not imagine stadiums being empty during the most exciting sports events, but it is a common sight now. The entertainment sector is one of the hardest hit sectors because of the COVID-19 pandemic [1]. Social distancing requirements made it impossible to have viewers in stadiums
Public and private schools are struggling to figure out how to bring face-to-face instruction to students during this pandemic. Health risks to students and teachers, parents struggling with child-care options and/or support for virtual learning, and schools’ capacities and budget limitations make this problem a severe logistical challenge. Schools need
[Nabaruna Karmakar was coauthor of this post] A study was conducted at the University of Denver on The Economic Impacts of the Austin, Texas "No Kill" Resolution. The study found great value in creating an animal welfare-focused community. It highlighted the benefits of economic growth due to an increased need in
Hidden Markov Models Introduction Statistical models of hidden Markov modeling (HMM) have become increasingly popular in the last several years. The models are very rich in mathematical structures and can form the theoretical basis of many real applications. In the classical continuous/discrete Markov process, each state corresponds to an observed
Mathematical optimization can help business leaders make better decisions in every aspect of their business. After a model has been built, end users are usually interested in doing some sort of scenario analysis to test its robustness and visualizing key performance metrics. SAS has various products that can work with
After a marathon of a season, 162 games in each team's schedule to be precise, the stakes for Major League Baseball are higher in October, and postseason play is underway. Whether it's the renewal of an old rivalry, redemption for last year's runners up, or rooting for this season's breakout
Major European football (soccer) leagues came to an end after an intensive year. Manchester City claimed the Premier League title after a high-intensity title race against Liverpool. It is unbelievable that Liverpool would have won 25 out of the last 27 PL titles with 97 points. Luckily, the Reds
Customer risk rating models play a crucial role in complying with the Know Your Customer (KYC) and Customer Due Diligence (CDD) requirements, which are designed to assess customer risk and prevent fraud. Today, the most common form of the Customer Risk Rating model is a score-based risk rating model. This
I bet you were not expecting a photo of 22 youngsters in swimsuits in a math blog, were you? The first time I heard about this reality TV show called "Are You The One?", my nerdiness and love for OR yelled at me: "There is so much math in this
Ballpark Chasers A cross-country trip is pretty much an all-American experience, and so is baseball. Traveling around the country to see all 30 Major League Baseball (MLB) stadiums is not a new idea; there's even a social network between so-called "Ballpark Chasers" where people communicate and share their journeys. Even
When I shared a status update a few months ago that I would spend my Sunday morning "trying to solve an asymmetric prize-collecting traveling salesman problem with uncertain data and side constraints" my colleagues knew that I wouldn't be working. Instead, I would spend my morning at an orienteering event,
SAS will be represented by more than 20 attendees at the INFORMS Annual Meeting at the George R. Brown Convention Center (GBCC) in Houston, Texas. Officially the conference runs from Sunday, Oct. 22 through Wednesday, Oct. 25, but our activities in Houston start even earlier. Technology Workshops on Saturday, October
I sit here fascinated, watching a world population clock. According to the US Census, a baby is born and a person dies every 7 and 12 seconds, respectively, in the United States. In 1950 our world had about 2.5 billion people; currently our population is over 7.3 billion. Estimates predict
Tomorrow is Independence Day, a federal holiday in the United States. Flags are displayed everywhere, especially in Washington, D.C., where I live. So let's have a little Fun with Flags! The current U.S. flag has 50 stars, one per state, with five rows of six stars interleaved with four rows
A common barrier to quantitative research, especially in health and financial areas, is the inability to share sensitive data due to confidentiality and privacy. It can be difficult and time consuming to get permission to share the data, which means useful research is delayed or not even attempted. However, collaborators seeking
The 2017 edition of SAS Global Forum, the largest annual SAS user group meeting, will be held at the Swan and Dolphin Resort in Orlando, Florida on April 2-5. Among the many analytic talks at SAS Global Forum 2017, several focus on operations research topics like optimization and simulation. If
SAS will be well represented at the 2017 INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research, which takes place April 2-4 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, NV. Two dozen SAS staff will participate in this conference. SAS/OR, the SAS Global Academic Program, and JMP will have adjacent and coordinated
Erwin Kalvelagen recently posted about a logic puzzle called Kakuro, also known as Cross Sums. As in traditional crossword puzzles, there are horizontal and vertical clues. As in Sudoku, each white cell is to be filled in with a digit from 1 to 9, with no digit repeated within the
There has been a lot of speculation over the years about the quality of the optimization solvers in SAS/OR, in particular the mixed integer linear optimization (MILP) solver. Measuring the performance of optimization solvers and comparing different solvers on a test set is a crucial part of modern optimization solver development.
In honor of today’s #GivingTuesday, which "harnesses the potential of social media and the generosity of people around the world to bring about real change in their communities,” I’ve been thinking about what constitutes “real change” and the role analytics can play on the many social issues our planet faces.
The 2016 INFORMS Annual Meeting will be held at the Music City Center and Omni Nashville Hotel in downtown Nashville, TN on November 13-16, with pre-conference events starting on Saturday, November 12. SAS will be a major participant in this conference. Over two dozen people from SAS will attend, with
Analytics Experience 2016 will be held on Sept. 12-14, 2016 at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, NV. There will be a great number of excellent talks and demonstrations at the conference, covering many aspects of SAS analytics and many practical applications. Several of these sessions deal directly with the use
In 1967, just a short time before a group of graduate students at North Carolina State University (NCSU) were starting a software company they called SAS, Dr. Salah Elmaghraby joined the faculty of NCSU as a Distinguished University Professor. In the 1970s, Dr. Elmaghraby led the effort to create one
At the most recent SAS Global Forum in Las Vegas, I gave a demo on using SAS/OR to compute an optimal strategy for the casino game blackjack. For anyone who wasn't able to attend, I'd like to show some of the code and results here.
This year's SAS Global Forum conference will take place April 18-21 at The Venetian in Las Vegas. For SAS/OR, SAS staff will present two Super Demos and three papers:
