Projects

The final project for this course involves giving a talk on a topic related to Operations Research. You can work in groups of 2 or 3 people, or you can work by yourself. Here is some basic information:

• The talk should be about 5 minutes + 5 minutes/person (for example, one person should give a 10 minute talk, and two people should give a 15 minute talk).
• The talk must use computer slides (such as PowerPoint or Beamer).

The presentations will occur on May 9, 14, and 16.

Your talk should focus on explaining the main ideas of your topic clearly, so that the audience (the other members of the class) can understand it. For some of the topics listed below, there is too much material to present in the given time — in that case, you should choose some part of the material to present.

Deadlines:

• April 25: Tell me which topic you are doing, and who is in your group, and sign up for which day your group will present. (Each group needs to choose a different topic, so that all of the presentations are different.)
• May 9, 14, and 16: Presentations occur.

Possible Topics

Here are some possible topics. If you have ideas for other topics, come talk to me. Note that you cannot do a topic that you have seen before (such as in a previous course).

• Applications of Operations Research: Find a paper that uses Operations Research. There are many examples in the textbook in the Application Vignettes (which are all listed in Table 1.1). Each Application Vignette includes a reference to a paper.
• A Topic from the Textbook: There are many topics in our textbook that we won't have time to cover. Here are some that I think would make good projects. If you see something else in the book that you are interested in that isn't listed below, come talk to me.
  • Queuing Theory (Chapter 17)
  • Inventory Theory (Chapter 18)
  • Simulation (Chapter 20)
  • Simulated Annealing (Section 14.3)
  • Genetic Algorithms (Section 14.4)
  • Minimum Spanning Tree (Section 10.4)
  • Markov Chains (Chapter 29) — This chapter is available online as a supplement to the 10th Edition. It can also be found as Chapter 16 in the 7th Edition, or I can e-mail you a PDF of the chapter.
• Game Theory Topics: We covered a very small part of game theory in class. There is much more than can be said on game theory. Here are some possible topics:
  • Modeling the Cuban Missile Crisis — I recommend looking in the book Games of Strategy by Dixit and Skeath, which is available in the library. You can also get the book from me.
  • Voting Theory— I recommend looking at the book Chaotic Elections! by Donald G. Saari, which is available in the library.
  • Coalition Games — See me for the book Models of Conflict and Cooperation by Rick Gillman and David Housman.
  • Auctions — I recommend looking in the book Games of Strategy by Dixit and Skeath, which is available in the library. You can also get the book from me.
  • Evolutionarily Stable Strategies — See me for the book Game Theory by James N. Webb.
• Combinatorial Optimization: We covered a few algorithms for solving optimization problems on graphs, but there are many more. Here are a few possible topics:
  • Max Flow/Min Cut — I recommend looking at Section 9.5 of the textbook and also looking at the book Introduction to Graph Theory by Douglas B. West (which is available in the library).
  • Stable Matchings See the book Introductory Combinatorics by Brualdi, which is available in the library.
  • Eulerian Cycles and the Chinese Postman Problem — I recommend looking in the book Introduction to Graph Theory by Douglas B. West (which is available in the library).