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Analytics Septemberoctober 2014
Analytics Septemberoctober 2014
Analytics Septemberoctober 2014
O R G
SEPTEMBER/ OCTOBER 2014 DRIVING BETTER BUSINESS DECISIONS
BROUGHT TO YOU BY:
MEASURING SOCIAL
MEDIA KARMA
Five easy-to-extract
metrics of posts,
tweets, blogs, pings and
uploads from a vast,
unstructured world
ALSO INSIDE:
10 myths of analytics and insights
High-performance analytics companies
Can technology transform government?
The value of wrangling data skills
Executive Edge
Verisk Analytics CEO
Scott Stephenson on
innovation redened:
beyond investing
in technology
WWW. I NF OR MS . OR G 2 | A NA LY T I CS - MAGA Z I NE . OR G
Slaying sacred cows
I NSI DE STORY
Slaying metaphorical sacred cows is
hard work, but thats exactly what Will
Towler does in this months lead fea-
ture article (10 myths of analytics and
insights). Among the myths Towler de-
bunks: Knowledge is power, People
are rational, You cant manage what you
cant measure, Sound analytics drive
sound decision-making and my personal
favorite, Great insights sell themselves.
Any analytics professional who has
ever bumped up against corporate deci-
sion-makers has been there, done that,
been dismissed, picked up the pieces
and analyzed what went wrong.
By defnition, metaphorical sacred
cows are considered to be exempt from
criticism or questioning, so they must be
approached with caution. Yet Towler not
only takes them on, he offers some valu-
able takeaways. For more click here.
Speaking of measuring, Mu Sigma
manager Kshira Saagar provides fve
fundamental measures that can serve as
quick-wins to analyze your social media
karma. Saagar notes that while almost
every organization spends lots of fnan-
cial and human resources trying to make
sense of their social media actions (post,
tweet, blog, ping, upload, etc.) and reac-
tions (like, share, re-tweet, favorite, re-
blog and download), about half of chief
marketing offcers are unable to quantify
social media impact on their companies.
Warns Saagar: In this interconnected
world, a small social media ripple can
have the impact of a tsunami on the even-
tual sales bottom line.
Harrison Schramm, CAP, author of
The Five-Minute Analyst column, turned
his textual data tools loose on an unusual
target this issue: presidents State of the
Union addresses over the years. Sch-
ramm used a method call the Flesch-
Kincaid Grade Level to calculate the
readability and complexity of frst-term
State of the Union addresses by Presi-
dents Madison, Lincoln, Clinton, Bush
(George W.) and Obama. To see how
they graded out, click here.
In case you were wondering, the CAP
after Schramms name indicates hes a
Certifed Analytics Professional (CAP
).
Developed by INFORMS, the CAP pro-
gram includes an exam that is adminis-
tered at more than 700 testing locations
around the world. The CAP program was
recently listed No. 1 by CIO magazine in
an article titled, 11 Big Data Certifcations
That Will Pay Off. For more on the CAP
story, click here.
PETER HORNER, EDITOR
peter.horner
@
mail.informs.org
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DRIVING BETTER BUSINESS DECISIONS
C O N T E N T S
FEATURES
10 MYTHS OF ANALYTICS AND INSIGHTS
From traditional consumer research to emerging business
intelligence, 10 fallacies to keep in mind to make the most
of your analytical efforts.
By Will Towler
HIGH-PERFORMANCE ANALYTICS ORGANIZATIONS
To realize value from big data analytics, organizations need to
integrate technology, tools and practices with existing analytics
ecosystems.
By Pramod Singh, Ritin Mathur and Srujana H.M.
FIVE MEASURES OF SOCIAL MEDIA KARMA
Return on investment: Quick-x analyses and easy-to-extract
metrics of posts, tweets, blogs, pings and uploads from vast,
unstructured world.
By Kshira Saagar
CAN GOVERNMENT LEAD INNOVATION?
The rst U. S. chief technology ofcer claims great promise for
public-private information technology partnerships.
By Doug Samuelson
30
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SEPTEMBER/ OCTOBER 2014
Brought to you by
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54
38
Tel 775 831 0300 Fax 775 831 0314 info@solver.com
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6 |
DRIVING BETTER BUSINESS DECISIONS
REGISTER FOR A FREE SUBSCRIPTION:
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INFORMS BOARD OF DIRECTORS
President Stephen M. Robinson, University of
Wisconsin-Madison
President-Elect L. Robin Keller, University of
California, Irvine
Past President Anne G. Robinson, Verizon Wireless
Secretary Brian Denton,
University of Michigan
Treasurer Nicholas G. Hall, Ohio State University
Vice President-Meetings William Bill Klimack, Chevron
Vice President-Publications Eric Johnson, Dartmouth College
Vice President-
Sections and Societies Paul Messinger, CAP, University of Alberta
Vice President-
Information Technology Bjarni Kristjansson, Maximal Software
Vice President-Practice Activities Jonathan Owen, CAP, General Motors
Vice President-International Activities Grace Lin, Institute for Information Industry
Vice President-Membership
and Professional Recognition Ozlem Ergun, Georgia Tech
Vice President-Education Joel Sokol, Georgia Tech
Vice President-Marketing,
Communications and Outreach E. Andrew Andy Boyd,
University of Houston
Vice President-Chapters/Fora David Hunt, Oliver Wyman
INFORMS OFFICES
www.informs.org Tel: 1-800-4INFORMS
Executive Director Melissa Moore
Meetings Director Laura Payne
Marketing Director Gary Bennett
Communications Director Barry List
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ANALYTICS EDITORIAL AND ADVERTISING
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Analytics (ISSN 1938-1697) is published six times a year by the
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
(INFORMS), the largest membership society in the world dedicated
to the analytics profession. For a free subscription, register at
http://analytics.informs.org. Address other correspondence to
the editor, Peter Horner, peter.horner@mail.informs.org. The
opinions expressed in Analytics are those of the authors, and
do not necessarily refect the opinions of INFORMS, its offcers,
Lionheart Publishing Inc. or the editorial staff of Analytics.
Analytics copyright 2014 by the Institute for Operations
Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved.
The PuzzlOR & Thinking Analytically
B Y J O H N T O C Z E K
Good Burger
Item
Sodium
(mg) Fat(g) Calories
Itemcost
($)
BeefPatty 50 17 220 $0.25
Bun 330 9 260 $0.15
Cheese 310 6 70 $0.10
Onions 1 2 10 $0.09
Pickles 260 0 5 $0.03
Lettuce 3 0 4 $0.04
Ketchup 160 0 20 $0.02
Tomato 3 0 9 $0.04
As the owner of a fast food restaurant with declining sales, your customers are looking for something
new and exciting on the menu. Your market research indicates that they want a burger that is loaded
with everything as long as it meets certain health requirements. Money is no object to them.
The ingredient list in the table shows what is available to include on the burger. You must include at
least one of each item and no more than five of each item. You must use whole items (for example, no
half servings of cheese). The final burger must contain less than 3000 mg of sodium, less than 150
grams of fat, and less than 3000 calories.
To maintain certain taste quality standards youll need to keep the servings of ketchup and lettuce the
same. Also, youll need to keep the servings of pickles and tomatoes the same.
Question: What is the most expensive burger you can make?
Send your answer to puzzlor@gmail.com by October 15
th
, 2014. The winner, chosen randomly from
correct answers, will receive a $25 Amazon Gift Card. Past questions can be found at puzzlor.com.
John Toczek is the Sr. Director of Decision Support and Analytics for Aramark Corporation in the Global Operational Excellence
group. He earned his BSc. in Chemical Engineering at Drexel University (1996) and his MSc. in Operations Research from
Virginia Commonwealth University (2005).
pXX OR/MS TODAY and Analytics Magazine August 2014 v1
The PuzzlOR Thinking Analytically
26
72
DEPARTMENTS
2 Inside Story
8 Executive Edge
12 Analyze This!
18 INFORMS Initiatives
24 Forum
26 Healthcare Analytics
62 Conference Preview
68 Five-Minute Analyst
72 Thinking Analytically
Tel 775 831 0300 Fax 775 831 0314 info@solver.com
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WWW. I NF OR MS . OR G 8 | A NA LY T I CS - MAGA Z I NE . OR G
One of the most overused words of the last decade
is innovation. As with most buzzwords, the more its
used, the less it tends to mean. But real innovation
is what determines progress, and often as a result
of progress, the defnition of innovation changes with
time. So, what does innovation mean now?
First, lets look at what it meant back in the day.
Innovation meant taking risks, betting on something
new. Todays innovators likely still are risk takers
that, after all, is the nature of business. But weve
advanced since then. Now, to cultivate and sustain
success, the risk takers must also be risk mitigators.
Today, taking risks and innovating go beyond in-
vesting in technology. Innovation is about investing
in new ways of thinking and empowering people to
challenge the status quo whether to create a new
product, fnd an unconventional solution or anticipate
opportunities. One example that meets all those crite-
ria is todays mesh economy companies that invent
new ways for people to share products and servic-
es, driving traditional companies to rethink their ap-
proaches to innovation.
Innovation is about
investing in new
ways of thinking and
empowering people to
challenge the status quo.
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
Innovation redened:
beyond investing in
technology
EXECUTI VE EDGE
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WWW. I NF OR MS . OR G 10 | A NA LY T I CS - MAGA Z I NE . OR G
EXECUTI VE EDGE
THREE KINDS OF INNOVATION
The Verisk Analytics innovation model
consists of three subsets:
process innovation drives effciencies
in business operations
product innovation extends existing
products with new functionality and
capabilities
invention redefnes markets and
creates new industry ideas
We implement all three, with an empha-
sis on invention. Invention stems from our
collaboration with customers, allowing us
to gain a thorough understanding of what
challenges confront the markets we serve
and how we can fnd solutions to those is-
sues. Equally, collaboration with our cus-
tomers enables us to discover what works
well and where the growth opportunities
exist for them and, consequently, what
services we need to create, revive, or ex-
pand to meet their growing requirements.
With customers deeply involved in our
development process, we gain the beneft
of real-time insights and reactions as they
move through phases of innovation with
us from ideation to prototype to adoption.
That kind of collaboration has redefned
what innovation truly means today both at
Verisk and for many other organizations.
INNOVATION: WHATS NEXT?
Investing in innovation requires a
culture that supports innovation, ensuring
employees understand and rally around
an organizational philosophy defning what
innovation means and why it matters. The
Verisk concept of innovation is based on
our n+1 philosophy: To be competitive to-
day, organizations must strive for what we
call the n+1 data set. If a companys data
set has a certain number of elements
n it must constantly be working to in-
clude one more. It must continually add
elements, advancing toward the next layer,
adding richness to its analysis. To be sure,
such an approach requires investment in
data resources, in analytics, in technology,
in people. But the return on investment is
to thrive, rather than simply survive or ulti-
mately fail. Thats true for all industries but
especially so in data-driven industries such
as insurance, healthcare and supply chain,
among others.
The n+1 philosophy can help a com-
pany answer such crucial questions as,
Whats next? and What should we do to
improve effciency, reduce risk, indeed
turn risk into opportunity and increase
growth?
For example, a comprehensive supply
chain risk management strategy along
with the incorporation of an array of pre-
dictive analytic tools to measure and man-
age risk often extends beyond the supply
chain itself to encompass all major opera-
tions of the organization. In fact, modern
predictive analytics is fast becoming a
tool to recognize key trends, patterns and
potential disruptions within supply chains.
Its a means to protect the enterprises
most valuable assets while also creating
sophisticated risk resilience and mitiga-
tion models.
EXPONENTIAL BENEFITS
A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers sur-
vey indicates that over the next fve years,
the most innovative companies are set to
grow at twice the pace of the global aver-
age and three times the rate of the least
innovative.
Theres a myriad of literature available
about innovation, yet much is not particu-
larly helpful because it tends to describe
innovation as a single element. Quite the
contrary, there are several different modes
of innovation, and a company has to be
clear about what it means when using the
term. What kind of innovation is the com-
pany looking for?
Innovation through the n+1 philoso-
phy shows up everywhere in the form
of this question: Is there a layer of data
were not yet accessing that may drive us
toward a better solution? One example
can be found in catastrophe modeling.
Historically, our business has tried to un-
derstand the probability of a range of per-
ils, such as hurricanes. Companies need
to understand both a hurricanes location
and intensity. But were also aware there
have been changes in the composition of
the atmosphere that potentially can lead
to an extreme weather event, such as a
hurricane. That said, if the temperature of
the surface of the ocean correlates with
the amount of energy that can affect the
next hurricane developing at sea, a com-
pany can use new parameters, such as
sea surface temperatures, in its analysis.
Thats the +1 layer. And each layer can
set the stage for yet another.
So, meaningful innovation today ap-
plies n+1 as its foundation and embraces
a comprehensive dialog with customers
to make sure a company truly under-
stands its customers emerging needs.
From the strength of that relationship, a
business tends to realize a viable prod-
uct and associated revenue much faster.
And the benefts just accrue from there:
Rather than aiming to build the solution
of all solutions, a business can produce
more refned iterations one at a time
and then enjoy the rewards of one suc-
cess after another.
Scott Stephenson is president and chief executive
offcer of Verisk Analytics.
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S E P T E MB E R / OCT OB E R 2014 | 11 A NA L Y T I C S
WWW. I NF OR MS . OR G 12 | A NA LY T I CS - MAGA Z I NE . OR G
ANALYZE THI S!
As I write this, I am as usual frantically prepar-
ing for the new school year, which starts in just a
few short days. I am once again teaching exclusively
MBA students here at the University of San Fran-
cisco. This year, in addition to the core quantita-
tive methods course and my longstanding applied
statistics elective, Im also teaching a new elective
entitled Introduction to Data Mining.
All of our analytics courses for MBA students
are taught with a strong practical bent. Our core
MBA course is entitled Spreadsheets and Business
Analytics, and not surprisingly this course requires
students to be very hands-on with Excel in building
models and analyzing historical data. In addition,
because both of my electives for this fall place a
heavy emphasis on data analysis, both of them are
built around the JMP software from SAS Institute.
At this point, a short digression for a true con-
fession: I have never liked computer programming.
Its not that Im not capable of doing this kind of
work just ask me about the integration of GAMS
with Mathematica in order to run numerical experi-
ments for my dissertation! but the reality is that
programming is something that I do not for the most
Students, professionals need
data wrangling skills
BY VIJAY MEHROTRA
It seems irresponsible
of business schools to
continue to teach a core
curriculum that does not
reflect the increasingly
central role of software
programming.
A NA L Y T I C S
part enjoy. In my research, I am always
looking for existing software tools (or
graduate students) that I might be able
to deploy to get my experiments done
more quickly, and I will invariably write
code from scratch only as a last resort.
Given this aversion to programming,
I am able to empathize with my MBA
students, the vast majority of whom
have little or no background with coding.
Moreover, all of the same factors that
have driven the proliferation of analytics
in the business world have also made it
possible and increasingly easier for
me to teach a lot of relatively sophisticat-
ed mathematical and statistical applica-
tions to these students. So I am thrilled
that thanks to todays faster hardware
and user-friendly software, I can bring
some important ideas and techniques to
my MBA students in a hands-on way.
A select few of my MBA students
ultimately decide to take my Analyt-
ics Consulting Projects course [1], and
thats where the game changes radical-
ly. The reality is that there is virtually no
S E P T E MB E R / OCT OB E R 2014 | 13
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ANALYZE THI S!
way to do a meaningful real-world analytics proj-
ect without doing a signifcant amount of data
manipulation work to get the data into shape
for whatever analysis needs to be done. As the
New York Times Steve Lohr recently reported
[2], this need for extensive data wrangling is as
great for professional data science teams as it is
for my students.
This is where the fun begins. How do you
manipulate data without writing a computer pro-
gram? The most common frst step is to use
Excel to manipulate raw data into the required
format, often in awkward and unnatural ways.
This is not only because of Excels increasingly
powerful capabilities for sorting, searching and
summarizing but also because this is an envi-
ronment with which they already have extensive
experience and comfort. One of last years proj-
ect teams, upon fnally determining a particular
statistical analysis that would provide the client
with some unique insights, spent several hours
perusing and posting on http://www.mrexcel.
com/ before ultimately fguring out how to do the
lookup/summary calculations that were needed
to prepare the data.
As the limitations of the Excel platform be-
come apparent, some teams have no choice
but to get educated on other tools such as Py-
thon, SQL and R. In class, we often hold short
workshops to help support this learning process,
some led by me and others organized by the
students. But all of this consumes valuable time
on the project calendars, and this data wran-
gling is often the source of a great deal of stress,
All of the students learn
that these capabilities are
truly essential in order
for them to be able to
answer even moderately
challenging business
questions whose answers
are data-driven.
A NA L Y T I C S S E P T E MB E R / OCT OB E R 2014 | 15
especially since the problem statement
and solution methodology is also evolv-
ing along the way for most projects.
All of the students in this projects
course ultimately learn that these ca-
pabilities are truly essential in order for
them to be able to answer even mod-
erately challenging business ques-
tions whose answers are data-driven.
As such, after teaching this class for a
second time last spring, I began thinking
that a programming prerequisite might
be worth creating. The course that I had
envisioned would be ruthlessly practical
(fundamental programming logic, basics
of relational databases and SQL, and ex-
amples of how to manipulate data in a few
different environments including Python,
SAS, SPSS and R). The goal would be
to give them a little more skill and a lot
more confdence in their ability to man-
age the data on subsequent projects.
It turns out that Im not the only busi-
ness faculty member thinking about
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WWW. I NF OR MS . OR G 16 | A NA LY T I CS - MAGA Z I NE . OR G
ANALYZE THI S!
whether my students should learn to
write code. A recent Business Week ar-
ticle entitled B-Schools Finally Acknowl-
edge: Companies Want MBAs Who Can
Code [3] provides a brief description of
what several elite MBA programs are do-
ing to provide their students with opportu-
nities to study programming. Yet almost
none of the examples that are cited in
the article, ranging from a joint MBA and
MS in computer science at Stanford to
new elective courses being considered
at Harvard, mention data management
(with the exception of economist David
Backus new elective in data visualiza-
tion and Python being offered at NYU
starting this fall). Instead, the focus of
the article is on MBAs who want to pur-
sue careers as product managers and
tech entrepreneurs and what these elite
programs are doing to support them.
I would argue that there is something
more profound here for business schools
to consider. As Marc Andreessen famously
pointed out in 2011, More and more major
businesses and industries are being run
on software and delivered as online servic-
es from movies to agriculture to national
defense. Six decades into the computer
Join the Analytics Section of INFORMS
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NOTES & REFERENCES
1. http://www.analytics-magazine.org/may-june-
2013/798-analyze-this-course-puts-students-in-the-
analytics-game
2. For the complete article, see http://www.nytimes.
com/2014/08/18/technology/for-big-data-scientists-
hurdle-to-insights-is-janitor-work.html?_r=0
3. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-11/b-
schools-fnally-acknowledge-companies-want-mbas-
who-can-code
revolution, four decades since the inven-
tion of the microprocessor and two decades
into the rise of the modern Internet, all of
the technology required to transform in-
dustries through software fnally works
In light of this reality, it seems irresponsible
of business schools to continue to teach
a core curriculum that largely does not re-
fect this increasingly central role.
While a class or two in software
programming will not solve that problem
overnight, it is certainly a start. And any
class that helps us create graduates that
can wrangle a lot more of their own data
should also be a big plus for our quanti-
tatively oriented MBA students and for
their future employers.
Vijay Mehrotra (vmehrotra@usfca.edu) is a
professor in the Department of Business Analytics
and Information Systems at the University of San
Franciscos School of Management. He is also a
longtime member of INFORMS.
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WWW. I NF OR MS . OR G 68 | A NA LY T I CS - MAGA Z I NE . OR G
FI VE-MI NUTE ANALYST
Lately Ive been interested in textual data, which
has opened a whole new world of things to think and
write about. One interesting thing about text data
is that the entire world of written word becomes your
analytic garden. While exploring this garden, I thought
it would be interesting to take a look at the presidents
State of the Union addresses through the years.
The State of the Union is an annual report from
the president of the United States to Congress. It can
be a venue for rolling out new policies and strategies.
We can safely assume that each administration takes
the preparation and delivery of this speech very seri-
ously, and puts the best resources they have into it.
Therefore, the addresses may be considered a snap-
shot of the writing style of their time. The speeches
can be found for all the presidents at a number of
places; I used the American Presidency Project [1].
For this analysis, we consider the frst term speeches
by the following presidents: Madison, Lincoln, Ken-
nedy, Clinton, Bush (George W.) and Obama.
Calculating readability via machine methods
seems diffcult at frst. Fortunately, there are a num-
ber of methods available. The one that I decided to
use is the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level [2], given by:
This test has several desirable properties; it is
straightforward to calculate because word and syl-
lable counts are easily counted by machine. Second,
State of the Union
BY HARRISON
SCHRAMM, CAP
One interesting thing
about text data is that
the entire world of written
word becomes your
analytic garden. While
exploring this garden,
I thought it would be
interesting to take a look
at the presidents State
of the Union addresses
through the years.
A NA L Y T I C S S E P T E MB E R / OCT OB E R 2014 | 69
it is invariant to the meaning of the spe-
cifc passages, so it can be used equally
against samples written in different styles
or time periods. The second desirable
property is also its main drawback. Spe-
cifcally, the term grade level can be
misleading, because it applies only to
structure and not meaning. For example:
It is a far, far better thing that I do than
I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest
that I go to than I have ever known [3],
and I went to the grocery store, bought
some rye bread and ate it all up [4].
The statements are clearly written at
different intellectual levels, but both score
3.6 on the Flesch-Kincaid scale.
Many packages are available to do this
type of analysis; the analysis that follows
was done using the koRpus [5] package
for R. Our exploration of some presidents
addresses are presented in Figure 1.
For sake of comparison, Lincolns
Gettysburg Address [6] has a grade level
of 11.5, The Enchiridion by Epictetus [7]
Figure 1: Flesch-Kincaid (FK) grade level of State of the Union a0ddresses for selected presidents.
The data suggests a decline in complexity from Madison and Lincoln to present. The most recent
three presidents (Clinton, G.W. Bush and Obama) are statistically indistinguishable as measured by FK
(ANOVA p = .66). This is a refection of the writing style of the time, more than the education level of
the various presidents (and their staffs). Lincoln and Kennedy are similar (p = .25), while Madison was
writing in a different grade level (p = .001).
WWW. I NF OR MS . OR G 70 | A NA LY T I CS - MAGA Z I NE . OR G
FI VE-MI NUTE ANALYST
has a grade level of 7.8, and my June
Five-Minute Analyst column [8] has a
grade level of 8.6. Conversely, The Cat
in the Hat by Dr. Seuss, consisting of
short sentences and monosyllabic words,
scores -.36.
DOES THIS MATTER?
The writing style of the presidents is
not only a refection of themselves, but
also of the times that they live and the
audience to which they are speaking. It
should not surprise us that in the mod-
ern era, presidents speaking to the entire
electorate in real time via TV and radio
have a lower grade level than Madison,
who was speaking to a smaller audience.
Those who wish for a more intellectual
discourse with our leaders should con-
sider the opening paragraph of Madisons
1809 address:
At the period of our last meeting I had
the satisfaction of communicating an ad-
justment with one of the principal belliger-
ent nations, highly important in itself, and
still more so as presaging a more extend-
ed accommodation. It is with deep concern
I am now to inform you that the favorable
prospect has been over-clouded by a re-
fusal of the British government to abide by
the act of its minister plenipotentiary, and
by its ensuing policy toward the United
States as seen through the communica-
tions of the minister sent to replace him.
It will be interesting in future years to
see if the apparent diffculty of texts stabi-
lizes, increases or decreases. At this mo-
ment, I would believe all three outcomes.
Harrison Schramm (harrison.schramm@gmail.
com) is an operations research professional in the
Washington, D.C., area. He is a member of INFORMS
and a Certifed Analytics Professional (CAP).
Request a no-obligation INFORMS Member Benets Packet
For more information, visit: http://www.informs.org/Membership
NOTES & REFERENCES
1. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/sou.php#menu
2. Kincaid, J. P., 1975, Derivation of New Readability
Formulas for Navy Enlisted Personnel, Research
Branch Report 8-75, Millington, Tenn.
3. The closing of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles
Dickens.
4. A sentence I just made up for this purpose.
5. http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/koRpus/
index.html
6. http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/
speeches/gettysburg.htm
7. As translated by George Long: http://www.ptypes.
com/enchiridion.html
8. http://www.analytics-magazine.org/july-august-
2014/1080-fve-minute-analyst-probabilistic-parking-
problems
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WWW. I NF OR MS . OR G 72 | A NA LY T I CS - MAGA Z I NE . OR G
THI NKI NG ANALYTI CALLY
As the owner of a fast food restaurant with declin-
ing sales, your customers are looking for something
new and exciting on the menu. Your market research
indicates that they want a burger that is loaded with
everything as long as it meets certain health require-
ments. Money is no object to them.
The ingredient list in Table 1 shows what is avail-
able to include on the burger. You must include at least
one of each item and no more than fve of each item.
You must use whole items (for example, no half serv-
ings of cheese). The fnal burger must contain less
than 3,000 mg of sodium, less than 150 grams of fat
and less than 3,000 calories.
To maintain certain taste quality standards youll
need to keep the servings of ketchup and lettuce the
same. Also, youll need to keep the servings of pickles
and tomatoes the same.
QUESTION: What is the most expensive burger
you can make?
Send your answer to puzzlor@gmail.com by
Nov. 15. The winner, chosen randomly from correct
answers, will receive a $25 Amazon Gift Card. Past
questions can be found at puzzlor.com.
BY JOHN TOCZEK
John Toczek is the senior director
of Decision Support and Analytics for
ARAMARK Corporation in the Global
Operational Excellence group. He
earned a bachelor of science degree
in chemical engineering at Drexel
University (1996) and a masters
degree in operations research from
Virginia Commonwealth University
(2005). He is a member of INFORMS.
The PuzzlOR & Thinking Analytically
B Y J O H N T O C Z E K
Good Burger
Item
Sodium
(mg) Fat(g) Calories
Itemcost
($)
BeefPatty 50 17 220 $0.25
Bun 330 9 260 $0.15
Cheese 310 6 70 $0.10
Onions 1 2 10 $0.09
Pickles 260 0 5 $0.03
Lettuce 3 0 4 $0.04
Ketchup 160 0 20 $0.02
Tomato 3 0 9 $0.04
As the owner of a fast food restaurant with declining sales, your customers are looking for something
new and exciting on the menu. Your market research indicates that they want a burger that is loaded
with everything as long as it meets certain health requirements. Money is no object to them.
The ingredient list in the table shows what is available to include on the burger. You must include at
least one of each item and no more than five of each item. You must use whole items (for example, no
half servings of cheese). The final burger must contain less than 3000 mg of sodium, less than 150
grams of fat, and less than 3000 calories.
To maintain certain taste quality standards youll need to keep the servings of ketchup and lettuce the
same. Also, youll need to keep the servings of pickles and tomatoes the same.
Question: What is the most expensive burger you can make?
Send your answer to puzzlor@gmail.com by October 15
th
, 2014. The winner, chosen randomly from
correct answers, will receive a $25 Amazon Gift Card. Past questions can be found at puzzlor.com.
John Toczek is the Sr. Director of Decision Support and Analytics for Aramark Corporation in the Global Operational Excellence
group. He earned his BSc. in Chemical Engineering at Drexel University (1996) and his MSc. in Operations Research from
Virginia Commonwealth University (2005).
pXX OR/MS TODAY and Analytics Magazine August 2014 v1
The PuzzlOR Thinking Analytically
Good
burger
The PuzzlOR & Thinking Analytically
B Y J O H N T O C Z E K
Good Burger
Item
Sodium
(mg) Fat(g) Calories
Itemcost
($)
BeefPatty 50 17 220 $0.25
Bun 330 9 260 $0.15
Cheese 310 6 70 $0.10
Onions 1 2 10 $0.09
Pickles 260 0 5 $0.03
Lettuce 3 0 4 $0.04
Ketchup 160 0 20 $0.02
Tomato 3 0 9 $0.04
As the owner of a fast food restaurant with declining sales, your customers are looking for something
new and exciting on the menu. Your market research indicates that they want a burger that is loaded
with everything as long as it meets certain health requirements. Money is no object to them.
The ingredient list in the table shows what is available to include on the burger. You must include at
least one of each item and no more than five of each item. You must use whole items (for example, no
half servings of cheese). The final burger must contain less than 3000 mg of sodium, less than 150
grams of fat, and less than 3000 calories.
To maintain certain taste quality standards youll need to keep the servings of ketchup and lettuce the
same. Also, youll need to keep the servings of pickles and tomatoes the same.
Question: What is the most expensive burger you can make?
Send your answer to puzzlor@gmail.com by October 15
th
, 2014. The winner, chosen randomly from
correct answers, will receive a $25 Amazon Gift Card. Past questions can be found at puzzlor.com.
John Toczek is the Sr. Director of Decision Support and Analytics for Aramark Corporation in the Global Operational Excellence
group. He earned his BSc. in Chemical Engineering at Drexel University (1996) and his MSc. in Operations Research from
Virginia Commonwealth University (2005).
pXX OR/MS TODAY and Analytics Magazine August 2014 v1
The PuzzlOR Thinking Analytically
Table 1: For the best burger, cost is no object.
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