First Friday Webinars – Why puzzles are very interesting for OR consulting?

Presented by Alex Fleischer, Optimization Expert (IBM)

When trying to solve puzzles, practitioners train themselves on OR techniques (and other techniques). Puzzles are good ways for large and small companies to have OR practitioners from academia and consulting take a look at their specific issues (ROADEF / Euro challenges). Puzzles can support challenging students to show motivation and skills.

Why puzzles are very interesting with regards to equivalent computational challenges? We need to map real world concepts to mathematical concepts and that’s useful! They also tell a story, so they’re very easy to share and explain.

Kaggle challenges are part of the buzz around data science. During the presentation, I’ll mention other public challenges with examples: The IBM Ponder this challenge, the Decision Management challenge, and, not to forget, the “Comité International des Jeux Mathématiques”, and I will request the audience’s feedback with regard to deciding if challenges are good training paths for OR consulting and, also, if real-world business OR helps practitioners get better at challenge.