I know a little bit about revenue management, such as littlewood's rule. In my mind, the price of air ticket should stochastically increase. When I try to book the tickets to Orlando from the southwest during the winter break, the price change of air ticket is quite dymatically as I can imagine. The lowest one way price in my case is $59. This price will be randomly available at each day. Moreover, the number of available seats also change at each day. That might be due to change of reservation by the other people. But it may not be entirely true.
Yesterday when other couple reserved one ticket at one time slot(depart at 12:00) and tried to reserved anther one at the same time slot, it failed since there was only one slot remaining before they reserved. So they changed to 10:00 now. Today that slot is available too. It seems that someone change or cancell their reservation yesterday. But it is not just that. I changed mine 12:55 to 10:00 in order we can go togather. But I cannot find available seats for 12:55 today(Yesterday 12:55 is unavailable). One possible explanation is that demand at 12:55 is stochastically higher than demand at 10:00 with respect to the same price. So southwest move the tickets available from me to higher price. But I don't think this is the whole story. What is the control mechnism of air ticket price at southwest is still a puzzle to me.
Btw: southwest allows you to change your reservation without any penalty. That is why "Last August, low-cost king Southwest Airlines carried more passengers than any other U.S. airline, the first time an LCC has claimed the top spot." reported by Time
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Monday, November 27, 2006
Friday, November 17, 2006
Poster presentation next year at INFORMS charpter@Lehigh?
Today Lehigh's INFORMS chapter had its first meeting this semester. Basically we discuss who will be invited as INFORMS chapter seminar speaker next semester. After that, we need to figure out a way to spend increased budget. There is one idea comes out during the discussion. That is we will provide T-shirt having ISE logo. I like this idea a lot. At least we need something to connecting people togather.
Right after meeting, I get an idea about create poster presentation next year. Now in our department, those optimization people have very strong connection. They have their own CORAL and IP seminar. But the connection outside optimization is quite loose. So hope this poster presentation will let people know what the other people do. And every poster presenter should wear the ISE T-shirt.
I also get idea to create subdivision leader in our chapter, say, optimization, stochastic, finance, scm&rm. Each leader should arrange 3 weeks long seminar. This is just coming from IP seminar yesterday.
Maybe we can also create the connection between IE and other department student, so that we can see what cool stuff we can do for other fields.
And just now, I send an email to our president about giving a talk to the first year phd student of the career path of phd. It is very often to mention in the company but seldom done by university. I guess after that we can also create Q&A page for all IE student.
I believe by doing more stuff like that. We can create the best INFORMS charpter ever and sell OR to more people.
If we can get enough people joining us, we can also make the newsletter once a semester. Maybe some short introduction about what happens to every member in our chapter. What had done last semester and what we will do next sememster.
Right after meeting, I get an idea about create poster presentation next year. Now in our department, those optimization people have very strong connection. They have their own CORAL and IP seminar. But the connection outside optimization is quite loose. So hope this poster presentation will let people know what the other people do. And every poster presenter should wear the ISE T-shirt.
I also get idea to create subdivision leader in our chapter, say, optimization, stochastic, finance, scm&rm. Each leader should arrange 3 weeks long seminar. This is just coming from IP seminar yesterday.
Maybe we can also create the connection between IE and other department student, so that we can see what cool stuff we can do for other fields.
And just now, I send an email to our president about giving a talk to the first year phd student of the career path of phd. It is very often to mention in the company but seldom done by university. I guess after that we can also create Q&A page for all IE student.
I believe by doing more stuff like that. We can create the best INFORMS charpter ever and sell OR to more people.
If we can get enough people joining us, we can also make the newsletter once a semester. Maybe some short introduction about what happens to every member in our chapter. What had done last semester and what we will do next sememster.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Keeping your direction, don't just follow fashion
This Friday, Kevin Shang gave us a talk about multi-echolen inventory problem. It is very classical problem but there aren't many people focusing on this area. And the barrier to this area is higher than most other areas related to inventory theory. So most people like to chase research 'fashion'. Somebody told me that a few years ago, sessions of SCM are full of people. But in this Informs meetings, RM seems more popular. A lot of people talk about dynamic pricing etc.
But Shang sticks to multi-echolen inventory problem after he passed his qualify exam. And he told me that he will continue to explore this area. It should be appreciate. Although our field just like a branch of applied math, it doesn't mean that everybody should just apply similar math technics to different applications. Once the math is too hard to go on in one area, then everybody shift their research interests. I don't mean that we shouldn't do so. In contrast, we need some people to do so to spread out our field. But what I mean is that we need some people to develop some unique math methods to solve those unsolved problems. Like developing in physics can push math forward. Why won't our IE people do the similar things? (Btw: I am not talking about those optimization people in IE fields)
Actually, I am a guy, who cannot focus on one thing for a long time. I like to find tons of applications, which can be easy in math. But I will find an area which can attract me for at least ten years. Of course, I will do other things on the same time.
But Shang sticks to multi-echolen inventory problem after he passed his qualify exam. And he told me that he will continue to explore this area. It should be appreciate. Although our field just like a branch of applied math, it doesn't mean that everybody should just apply similar math technics to different applications. Once the math is too hard to go on in one area, then everybody shift their research interests. I don't mean that we shouldn't do so. In contrast, we need some people to do so to spread out our field. But what I mean is that we need some people to develop some unique math methods to solve those unsolved problems. Like developing in physics can push math forward. Why won't our IE people do the similar things? (Btw: I am not talking about those optimization people in IE fields)
Actually, I am a guy, who cannot focus on one thing for a long time. I like to find tons of applications, which can be easy in math. But I will find an area which can attract me for at least ten years. Of course, I will do other things on the same time.
Friday, November 10, 2006
What should I do in the next Informs meeting?
- Since I already get to know some friends from this conference, I hope I can meet each one individually and have deep conversation. Also because, I will have more time to do research from the fourth year, I hope to seek more opportunities to work on the different subjects with different people with their own expertise
- Prepare some deeper work to present. That's the only way to impress people, so that they are willing to work with you if possible.
- Get to know job market
- Create the chance to talk with those faculties
- Last but the most important, live at a hotel nearby the convention center. I run into trafic every day and get too less sleep every day during conference. And I haven't recovered yet.
internal force(nei gong) or external technic(zhao shu)?
I went to an Informs conference from Nov. 4 to Nov. 8. Everything goes well. Meeting and making friends is the most important thing for me since our department only has very few people sharing the same interests with me. I need to extend my network. Second thing is to present my work. It is ok since nobody left during my talk and I got two questions and handled well in my opinion.
But there is one fundamental question occuring several times during the conference. On one hand, we need to have good papers before we graduate. It means that I need to work hard on generating papers, which implies that I need to read a lot of literature. As Long told me that we need to accumulate several tricks which are used by different authors again and again in their papers but no one collect and publish those as a reference book. This is absolutely right. Even those great mathematicians has only a few tricks. On the other hand, I like to take as much courses as I can since I believe only when you have complete skill set, you can consider problems from different angles which gives you more insight. Also you can do something crossing the different fields.
In Chinese Wuxia novel, there are two kind of persons. One is working on internal force(nei gong) . It takes a long time to master. The other person is working on external technic(zhao shu). It is fast to learn but easy to hit the bottleneck. In the short run, the people working on zhao shu can easily beat the previous type of people since the stuff they learn is more practical. But in the long run, the previous people can outperform the people only having zhao shu since it has more power.
In this conference, when people start to talk about those 'famous' people's name, I feel a little bit embarrassing since I cannot recognize a lot of those 'big' names. I start to think whether I spend too much time in taking course other than reading related literature. For example, the next semester, I plan to take two courses and audit another two courses again. But I stick to finish those courses since I won't get any time to do so after I graduate. And only when you have enough nei gong, you can pick up those tricks quickly. I am not worried about my ability to come up ideas. Actually, during this Informs, I generate several new ideas. For now, I need to focus on developing those nei gong and try to work on only one or two ideas. After next semester, I would devote most of time into research but not now.
But there is one fundamental question occuring several times during the conference. On one hand, we need to have good papers before we graduate. It means that I need to work hard on generating papers, which implies that I need to read a lot of literature. As Long told me that we need to accumulate several tricks which are used by different authors again and again in their papers but no one collect and publish those as a reference book. This is absolutely right. Even those great mathematicians has only a few tricks. On the other hand, I like to take as much courses as I can since I believe only when you have complete skill set, you can consider problems from different angles which gives you more insight. Also you can do something crossing the different fields.
In Chinese Wuxia novel, there are two kind of persons. One is working on internal force(nei gong) . It takes a long time to master. The other person is working on external technic(zhao shu). It is fast to learn but easy to hit the bottleneck. In the short run, the people working on zhao shu can easily beat the previous type of people since the stuff they learn is more practical. But in the long run, the previous people can outperform the people only having zhao shu since it has more power.
In this conference, when people start to talk about those 'famous' people's name, I feel a little bit embarrassing since I cannot recognize a lot of those 'big' names. I start to think whether I spend too much time in taking course other than reading related literature. For example, the next semester, I plan to take two courses and audit another two courses again. But I stick to finish those courses since I won't get any time to do so after I graduate. And only when you have enough nei gong, you can pick up those tricks quickly. I am not worried about my ability to come up ideas. Actually, during this Informs, I generate several new ideas. For now, I need to focus on developing those nei gong and try to work on only one or two ideas. After next semester, I would devote most of time into research but not now.
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