When following some different blogs about Operations Research the other day, I found the following very nice OR joke on the ThinkOR blog:

At the end of his course on mathematical methods in optimization, the professor sternly looks at his students and says: “There is one final piece of advice I’m going to give you now: Whatever you have learned in my course – never ever try to apply it to your personal lives!”

“Why?” the students ask.

“Well, some years ago, I observed my wife preparing breakfast, and I noticed that she wasted a lot of time walking back and forth in the kitchen. So, I went to work, optimized the whole procedure, and told my wife about it.”

“And what happened?!”

“Before I applied my expert knowledge, my wife needed about half an hour to prepare breakfast for the two of us. And now, it takes me less than fifteen minutes…”

Towards the end of my studies, I started to work in the field of Operations Research. After that, my PhD topic was also in the field of Operations Research. Currently I work for paragon, which is the developer of AIMMS and as can be seen on the website of our company, we strive to enable people to apply OR successfully.

Now there always was the problem that I have to explain to other people what exactly Operations Research is. The other day I found the perfect post about this on the blog of Michael Trick, who in turn got this from the first OR post on the blog of Jim Orlin.

After reading the comments, I have to say that I like the explanations I found in the comments, like “practical math”. But I fully agree with the modified definition given by Michael Trick: “The science of better decision making.

Also, I really enjoyed the following algorithm that Jim Orlin gave that helps me explain what exactly OR is:

Algorithm for describing operations research to a friend or colleague.

**Step 1. **Find out a system about which the other person is both interested and knowledgeable.(e.g, sports, entertainment, communication, travel, or anything relating to a person’s job.

Step 2.Develop a plausible scenario based on the system in Step 1; e.g., scheduling sports teams, designing wireless phone systems to provide for the best possible reception, or designing queuing systems at Disneyworld. (I have found that it is very useful to give an example that addresses a problem at the other person’s work that he or she just told you was important.)

**Step 3. **Explain how operations research can be used to find an excellent solution for the scenario in Step 2 or provide very useful information for the scenario in Step 2.