New Methods of Thought and Procedure: Contributions to the Symposium on Methodologies

ISBN-13: 9783642876196 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 338 str.

F. Zwicky; A. G. Wilson

Opis

10 Definitions Operations research, first called operational re- search by P. M. S. Blackett (1) in Britain about 1938, has a broad zneaning illustrated by several exaznples in this section. Briefly, it znay be defined as the study of znan- znachine systezns that have a purpose. In znore descriptive terzns, operations research involves the application of physical, biological, and social sciences in the znost quanti- tative way possible. It thus draws on the disciplines of znedicine, psychology, and all forzns of engineering (2). As the following historical exaznples will show, an essential step in every 0 - R study is recognition of the purpose of an ope ration, an organiz ation, or a systezn. This often leads to a zneasure of znerit or a value parazneter by which operational results can be coznpared; for exaznple, the fraction of approaching aircraft shot down by an air-defense systezn, or annual sales of products by an industrial con- cern, or gross national product of a country. Predictions of such operational results, and quanti- tative coznparisons between different systezns, require znatheznatical znodels of each systezn and its operation. In sozne cases--such as the accuracy of anti-aircraft fire, or the cost of producing a znachined product, or transportation costs of delivery--the znodel can be znatheznatically precise or deterzninistic. More generally, operational results are probabalistic and require a stochastic znodel.

Spis treści

Prologue.- Section I Operations Research.- 1 The Nature of Operations Research and its Beginnings.- 2 A Decade of Operations Research in Health.- 3 Operations Research Applied to City Planning.- Section II Systems Engineering.- 1 Systems Engineering—Planning.- 2 Systems Engineering—Implementation.- Section III Dynamic Programming.- 1 Dynamic Programming: A Reluctant Theory.- 2 Dynamic Programming’s Progeny.- Section IV Information Theory.- 1 A Survey of Information Theory.- 2 Information Theory and Modern Digital Communication.- Section V Game Theory.- 1 Game Theory: A New Paradigm of Social Science.- 2 Welfare, Economic Structure and Game Theoretic Solutions.- 3 On Committees.- Section VI Morphological Research.- 1 The Morphological Approach to Discovery, Invention, Research and Construction.- 2 Morphology and Modularity.- 3 Morphology of Multilanguage Teaching.- Epilogue.