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What is Operations Research, and why is it related to this puzzle. I found the puzzle easy enough. It's just a matter of calculating how many moves are needed

by Pitarou 13y ago

What is Operations Research, and why is it related to this puzzle. I found the puzzle easy enough. It's just a matter of calculating how many moves are needed from square 11, then square 10, and so on. The chutes complicate matters a little, but not much.

Jtsummers 13y ago
OR is a discipline that studies systems and processes, then optimizes them based on statistical and mathematical modeling. At least from a high level, that's the key. In industry, it's used for routing (see UPS, any big box store, Amazon) of goods, in airlines for management of passengers and routes. In industrial processes they take the various factors involved (material costs, personnel costs, time, safety, whatever) and develop models to enable better decision making. Many applications of it are, essentially, applied statistics and math modeling. EDIT: In a factory setting OR/IE types are heavily involved in layout of the environment, often modeled as a network. Workstations might be nodes, transit between them are edges. Various costs would be involved. Node A generates widget A at a rate of T_A, node B requires node A and item B - externally sourced - to produce widget B. Node B is the bottleneck, break it out into 3 worker processes... If this sounds like how we design distributed processes in software, it's because it's the same problem, fundamentally. As to the puzzle, I guess it's about modeling the problem in a manner similar to other business processes. Consider the game as a business process model of handling a software CR. Each chute is a potential setback (crap, found an error during QA, send it back to testing for analysis) and the ladders could be things that advance a process unusually quickly (we got the data from the customer on the error, turned out it isn't with our code but documentation on how to use the program, update the manual and bypass testing/SQA). Collect data over time, optimize away inefficiencies or deficiencies that induce extra work or rework. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research EDIT 2: Not sure if tired or autocorrect, but manor and manner are not the same thing.
- dhdhd 13y ago
  I like turtles.

by Pitarou 13y ago

Jtsummers 13y ago

OR is a discipline that studies systems and processes, then optimizes them based on statistical and mathematical modeling. At least from a high level, that's the key. In industry, it's used for routing (see UPS, any big box store, Amazon) of goods, in airlines for management of passengers and routes. In industrial processes they take the various factors involved (material costs, personnel costs, time, safety, whatever) and develop models to enable better decision making. Many applications of it are, essentially, applied statistics and math modeling. EDIT: In a factory setting OR/IE types are heavily involved in layout of the environment, often modeled as a network. Workstations might be nodes, transit between them are edges. Various costs would be involved. Node A generates widget A at a rate of T_A, node B requires node A and item B - externally sourced - to produce widget B. Node B is the bottleneck, break it out into 3 worker processes... If this sounds like how we design distributed processes in software, it's because it's the same problem, fundamentally. As to the puzzle, I guess it's about modeling the problem in a manner similar to other business processes. Consider the game as a business process model of handling a software CR. Each chute is a potential setback (crap, found an error during QA, send it back to testing for analysis) and the ladders could be things that advance a process unusually quickly (we got the data from the customer on the error, turned out it isn't with our code but documentation on how to use the program, update the manual and bypass testing/SQA). Collect data over time, optimize away inefficiencies or deficiencies that induce extra work or rework. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research EDIT 2: Not sure if tired or autocorrect, but manor and manner are not the same thing.

dhdhd 13y ago
I like turtles.