15.053 Class Home

15.053 Optimization Methods in Management Science

Spring 2012

Instructor: James B Orlin

TAs: Adina Taylor, Ebrahim Nasrabadi, Giacomo Nannicini, kurtis@mit.edu

Lecture: TTh 1:00-2:30 (E25-111)
Recitation 1: F 10:00-11:00 (E51-057)
Recitation 2: F 1:00-2:00 (E51-149)

Information:

OCW archive available

Announcements

Lectures Tuesday and Thursday

Dear class,

Tomorrow and Thursday are the last two lectures of the semester. As I mentioned in class, each lecture counts as two classes in terms of class participation. (You won't be tested on the material, and so I thought I should add some incentive.) Also, I prefer not having an exam during final's week, and this 2-year tradition can be maintained in the future if students attend the last two classes.

Tuesday's class: Some personal reflections on the value of OR. Comments on careers in OR. Some applications to internet content delivery, airline management, and sports analytics. A few excerpts of interviews of MIT faculty in OR.

Thursdays class. Reflections on 15.053. Comments on other OR subjects at MIT, OR UROPS, as well as on the Business Analytics and OR concentration at Sloan. Some course feedback will be collected. (Clickers should be returned on Thursday).

-- Jim Orlin

Announced on 14 May 2012 8:54 p.m. by James B Orlin

UROP position

UROP position for pay: Learning modeling in Optimization through AMPL
When: Summer 2012

We are looking for one UROP student to help in developing tools, tutorials and examples for modeling in the context of Optimization/Mathematical Programming. AMPL is a modeling language that is very useful for acquiring modeling skills, because it is a descriptive language where one describes a model almost like it would look "on paper". Unfortunately, it is not very user friendly and runs only through command line. We want to develop a very simple GUI to allow students to load their model and data, execute AMPL on them, and visualize the output. The GUI should run on the most common platforms. Furthermore, the UROP student should possess modeling skills and be motivated to develop AMPL tutorials and examples that students of an Optimization course can use on their own to improve their modeling skills. Some knowledge of Java is required. Knowledge of a modeling language (AMPL, GAMS) is desirable but not required. Clearly we will provide guidance: this is a good opportunity to learn a modeling language more in-depth.

If interested, please contact me.

Announced on 04 May 2012 5:45 p.m. by Giacomo Nannicini

Recitation on Friday 5/4

We are consolidating the two recitation sections for this coming Friday, May 4th. A single session will be held in the normal room (E51-057) at 10AM. If you normally attend the 1PM session and are unavailble at 10AM, please email Adina to schedule a different time to meet to review the problems. As usual, recitation problems will be posted online along with solutions.

Announced on 02 May 2012 3:51 p.m. by Adina Taylor

Tutorial on Branch and Bound (update)

There is now a tutorial on Branch and Bound in ppt and pdf.
The RHS of the constraint on slide 2 should be 10. This typo has now been corrected.

Announced on 30 April 2012 9:23 a.m. by James B Orlin

Reminder: Review Session Monday 7 to 8

This is a reminder that I will hold a review session in E25-111 (the usual classroom) from 7 to 8 on Monday. I am not planning anything specifically for the review session. I will go over any topic or problem that you would like to see clarified. -- Jim Orlin

Announced on 29 April 2012 6:34 p.m. by James B Orlin

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