Concept
Operations research
Overview
Operations research (British English: operational research), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a branch of applied mathematics that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve management and decision-making. The term management science is occasionally used as a synonym.
Employing techniques from other mathematical sciences, such as modeling, statistics, and optimization, operations research arrives at optimal or near-optimal solutions to decision-making problems. Because of its emphasis on practical applications, operations research has overlapped with many other disciplines, notably industrial engineering. Operations research is often concerned with determining the extreme values of some real-world objective: the maximum (of profit, performance, or yield) or minimum (of loss, risk, or cost). Originating in military efforts before World War II, its techniques have grown to concern problems in a variety of industries.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
There are nevertheless, in mathematics, some examples of so-called Induction, in which the conclusion does bear the appearance of a generalization grounded on some of the particular cases included in it. A mathematician, when he has calculated a sufficient number of the terms of an algebraical or arithmetical series to have ascertained what is called the _law_ of the series, does not hesitate to fill up any number…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic
States what Operations research is.
Any such select set is called the set of postulates, or premises, from which the reasoning proceeds. The reasoning is nothing else than the exhibition of the whole pattern of general conditions involved in the pattern derived from the selected postulates.
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the modern world
States what Operations research is.
Yet those who know the habits of the continent of Europe are aware how apparently small a motive often outweighs the desire of money getting, even in the operations which have money getting for their direct object. The more highly the science of ethology is cultivated, and the better the diversities of individual and national character are understood, the smaller, probably, will the number of propositions become…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Operations research is.
Related ideas
- Game theory
- Problem solving
- Cryptography
- Nobel Prize
- Probability
- Statistics
- Science
- World War II
- Baroque
- Blaise Pascal
- Christiaan Huygens
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Combinatorics
- Computer science
- Taylor & Francis
- Charles Babbage
- Columbia University
- Concept
- Economics
- Information theory
- Data science
- Percy Williams Bridgman
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Pragmatism.