Almost from my starting knowledge on economics…, well, from my starting knowledge on academical economics (actually, economics is in the air from the first time we have to make a decision!), I have been using IDEAS as my preferred platform for knowledge base, complementing it with Econlit, from the American Economic Association. It was a surprise for me when, after being using for a while IAOR (the equivalent in OR for Econlit) for getting info on OR published papers, yesterday I found my Or-equivalent for IDEAS: Optimization Online, from the Mathematical Programming Society.
Brilliant!
OK, let’s see if this would work…
Max “Human understanding on… [here your wish]”
s.t. Human Being Limitations
Environmental Constraints
Does it have any global optimum?.
After reading a lot of posts patronising Numb3rs I decided to have a taster. Regretfully in Spain was a total disaster (where’s our education system going?), and in Brazil, where I’m currently living, I think it’s on cable (however, from the last news appeared on press, the education system for maths is as bad as an 8th grader, about 14 years old, having problems calculating percentages). Well, but that’s not the point; the thing is I bought the First Season DVD Set and watched the first two chapters. Here we go!.
Minuses:
_ The acting is not very good…, I imagine… yet. It’s just the first two.
_ Why the mathematician has to be presented as a troubled mind?.
Pluses:
_ I liked the way maths is inserted into the action…, natural, we do use maths everyday and this is shown.
_ The most I liked was the way they try to introduce “humanity” within maths. I think our colleagues from INFORMS Section, Behavioral Process Management, will be happy.
Thanks! And remember, It’s just my opinion.
A physicist, and engineer and a economist are all trapped on an island with a box of canned food that they cannot get open. The physicist says, “If I build a fire and then we heat up the cans eventually the cans will blow up from expanding gasses and then we will be able to eat the food.” The engineer then suggests, ” If I can make a three to one pulley system perhaps we can rig up a machine to open up the cans.” The economist then chimes in saying, ” You guys are making this far too hard let’s just assume we have a can opener.”
Besides the downgrade economists receive in this joke (always living in an imaginary world?: not really!), we can perceive the differences between all three on the methodologies involved in their state of mind. Mathematicians, as well as physicists, make further use of the theory; engineers are more practical, they make use of the theory to accomplish the practice; economists mix this and that due to complications of Social Sciences.
So, who’s the best?. None and all: everyone of us OR colleagues should be a little bit of everyone deppending on the job…
Further questions I’ll answer. The debate is open!
