INFORMS Releases

When 4,000 experts in everything from laws about cell phones and driving to deciding whether to punt or pass on fourth down come to Austin on November 7, the city will find itself deluged not only by smart people who use math for a living but also problem solvers who tackle America’s greatest threats.

When Stephen Barrager was diagnosed in 2007 with acute multiple myeloma, a form of bone marrow cancer, he endured the same anxiety that troubles all those who receive an upsetting diagnosis. The way he went about dealing with his disease and its treatment, however, was different. Barrager drew upon his engineering and management science background to help him make difficult decisions. Now he is sharing his insights with hospitals and doctors in his native Bay Area and with colleagues at a conference coming to Austin on November 7.

Analysts examining a firm and the qualifications of its top management team discount the educational background of African American managers who graduated from prestigious universities while accepting the qualifications of white managers with the same college credentials, according to two experiments reported in the current issue of Organization Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS^®).

High testosterone levels in CEOs negotiating mergers and acquisitions are linked to a higher rate of dropped deals and an increase in hostile takeover attempts, according to a new study in the current issue of Management Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS^®).

Passengers who fly in Developing World countries face 13 times the risk of being killed in an air accident as passengers in the First World. The more economically advanced countries in the Developing World have better overall safety records than the others, but even their death risk per flight is seven times as high as that in First World countries.