Informs Blog

INFORMS is an academic society for Operations Research and Management Science. It was formed a few years ago by merging two groups (Operations Research Society of America and The Institute of Mangement Science) that were formed separately in the 1950's. They used to be separate organizations that had joint meetings -- twice a year. One called ORSA/TIMS and one called TIMS/ORSA. I used to go to almost every meeting but since nobody is paying my travel and registration expenses these days I don't go anymore.

I did go to the one in Pittsburgh a couple of years ago to give a short talk on Poker Bankrolls and was going to go to a Regional Meeting in College Station last year to give a similar talk, but I had a heart attack and went to the hospital instead.

The merged group doesn't have two meetings a year, just one. And this year it's in San Diego and it's going on right now. What's cool about this years meeting is that it's being blogged in a group blog.

The blog is worth checking one, it's giving a pretty good superficial introduction to what Operations Research is all about.

I went to an ORSA/TIMS (or was it TIMS/ORSA?) meeting in San Diego back in the 1970's and gave a talk on a flaw in the way a game theory model of poker that had been published in the flagship journal (Operations Research) treated hand values in draw poker. Back then there were entire all-day sessions devoted to gambling models. Primarily because blackjack research was in it's heyday and modern mathematical finance was just starting out and often using gambling models to study financial markets.
INFORMS doesn't cover gambling so well anymore. The topic has kind of played itself out among math dweebs. They do cover applications in sports, but not so much sports betting as in sports tactical decisions.