What a bad luck

This year, my Informs presentation is arranged at Wednesday again. I was looking forward to presenting my transshipment stuff in front of more people than the last year.

Two years in a row to present at Wednesday. What a bad luck! Considering that it is in Seattle, a lot of people living in the east coast would need to take flight in the morning so that they can get home before midnight. So if they don't want to cancel or miss two classes, they won't be able to make any Wednesday session.

Informs need to consider to shift their session starting Sat. instead of Sun. so that there is more people can attend all the sessions. Or they need to think out a way to enlarge the number of parallel sessions. Sun. to Wed. is not a good idea.

Stuck at Chicago

First trip, I got my bagage at second day after I arrived Chicago and got fever shortly.
Second trip, I got stomach flu at last day at Chicago.
This time, I am stuck at Chicago for two days due to bad weather.
Maybe Chicago knows I hate it and want to keep me as long as possible. Anyway, Chicago is beautiful right now and it is so easy to find a good restaurant with reasonable price.

Back to China for three weeks

I haven't been back to China for two years. Now it is time. I will departure on June 7th and be back on June 28th.

During those three weeks, I am also going to attend MSOM conference at Tsinghua. It is said that there is more people showing up in each session compared with Informs annual meeting. Let's see whether I can absorb more stuff during the meeting.

Also it is a good chance to talk with my old friends there. When I am in USA, I have very little connection to the industry. It is a big disadvantage when doing applied model for real business environment. One of my little sisters already opened a chain store. I hope to see how it operates daily, where my knowledge can help her, and whethter I can come up some new models.

When I am back to USA, I need to work on my proposal. Ideally, I propose in the middle of August. Though time is scarce resource to me, I will enjoy a short break

Open source codes of each paper

Usually when you read a journal paper and happen to to like it. So you want to implement their idea. Now the problem occurs, how can I implement those ideas? I need to work out every detail to work it out. Also only when you work it out in detail, you can say you understand it since you make computer understand it.

Why do all papers have their code attached? I will do it for all my papers from now on.

• to make my code more organized
• to make my work better known by others if they can see how concrete results come out
• to improve the work if I can get the feedback from others.

Back to Blog again

The first rule of Newton principle is that when you stop, you will stop forever unless there is a change of outside force. It can be applied to write blog. Once you stop, you will stop forever. But finally some force disappear. The spring semester is over.

Now I am rusty as a researcher. Too many things distract me. But I will be ready soon.

Lehigh IE rank drops 2 in 2007

Based on the latest US News, the rank of Lehigh IE drops to 15 from 13 this year. USC and NCSU go above Lehigh this year.

We need more professors!!

What does research do on airline industry

2007 airline quality rating comes out today. There are two major factors, I guess research field care about. One is on time performance which is related to scheduling problem. The other is deny rate which is related to RM.
http://www.eyewitnessnewstv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6312644
On time performance becomes worse

On-time performance, the report said, worsened last year, with 75.5 percent of
flights arriving on time, compared with 77.3 percent in 2005. JetBlue Airways
took a hit in February, when passengers on 10 planes spent from five hours to 10
1/2 hours sitting on runways at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New
York because of icy weather and gate congestion. It took days for the airline to
recover from the February storm and resume normal operations. It led JetBlue to
establish a customer bill of rights promising vouchers to passengers who
experience delays.

Deny rate (maybe more and more RM is adopted)

The study found an increase in the number of passengers bumped or denied
boarding because of oversold flights -- 1.01 denied boardings per 10,000
passengers last year, compared with 0.89 per 10,000 in 2005. JetBlue had the
lowest rate of bumped passengers; Atlantic Southeast the highest.