Categorie: Operations Research
Mr. Pity vs. Nature
Mr. Pity was a very, very unlucky man. As a kid he had once accidentally stepped on a butterfly in the forest. But this was no ordinary butterfly! It was the most beautiful butterfly Nature had ever produced. Out of revenge, Nature cursed young Mr. Pity: “Whatever you do, I’ll try to make your life as miserable as possible!” Now, Nature’s curse became evident every time Mr. Pity faces a decision in which uncertainty is involved. For Nature is the one that pulls the strings in all probabilistic situations. Thankfully, however, the Creator had been […]
Estimated reading time: 9 minuten
The ‘New’ normal
The measures taken during the current global coronavirus pandemic will not last for a few more weeks. Instead, these measures may last forever. This pandemic is unlike anything we have ever experienced before. Almost all aspects of our daily lives have been altered to sustain an almost unorthodox way of living. Society has successfully shifted from an open society to one where social distancing is the norm. We have profoundly changed the way we work, socialize, shop, exercise, and educate ourselves. Most of us want things to go back to normal in the coming few […]
Neural networks, the machine learning of the future
The human brain solves millions of problems daily. To do this, the brain first acquires the necessary information needed to solve any given problem. Then it uses and modifies this information to get a clear assessment of what the problem exactly entails. Once it knows all of this it is (in most cases) able to solve the problem at large. It is able to do so, because of the knowledge about similar problems it has already obtained. Neural networks, named after the neurons in the human brain, work in a very similar way. They consist […]
The Optimal Pace
For professional athletes, the goal of running a marathon is to complete it as fast as possible. However, this does not mean that the athletes are running as hard as they can all the time, as one cannot maintain this pace the entire marathon. Hence they need to find a maintainable pace at which they finish the marathon as fast as possible: the optimal pace problem. It turns out that this very general problem is occurring far more often in normal day life and in business than most of us realise. Furthermore, it turns out […]
Is life a video game?
Reality is probably not what it seems. The simulation hypothesis proposes that all of reality, including the earth and the universe, is in fact, a computer simulation. This proposition is, in fact, based on fundamental principles of human reasoning. Billions of years have passed since the formation of the earth. Early carbon-based life forms have had compelling experiences, to say the least. Imagine for a second, that the senses we experience, the things we observe, are all but a simulation, in which we are the “sims”. Computational power is increasing at an unprecedented rate, unlike […]
The danger of quantum computers
The idea of a quantum computer first arose in the late century. Richard Feynman was the first person to think of using the special quantum properties to solve difficult mathematical problems. A lot of progress has already been achieved. “Let’s see what the future of quantum computers has to offer.” A basic understanding of quantum computers All computers work in basically the same way. They receive an input of data, manipulate the data in some way and finally give an output. Quantum computers are no different. But what makes them so special? Quantum computers […]
AlphaZero: the new king of chess
It may seem like a guy with a really curious last name gave his child an even weirder first name, but AlphaZero is actually the name of the computer program developed by DeepMind (owned by Google). This year, this program managed to shock the chess world by beating Stockfish 10, which used to be the strongest chess engine in the world. To make this performance even more impressive, it took AlphaZero only four hours to become this good at chess. Checkmate humans, your time is over. AlphaZero vs. Stockfish This is not the first impressive […]
Estimated reading time: 3 minuten
Puzzle box problem
Problem You are being held captive in a bunker with no possible way to communicate with any other life form. There is only one way to escape from this prison. You see a wooden box in front of you that has 8 knobs. It looks like the lock of the bunker. Each knob has a pointer that can point in 4 directions: up, right, down or left. On the box there is a note which states: ‘This box can be solved by turning every knob in the upright position, so all 8 knobs must be in […]
Estimated reading time: 4 minuten
Met Operations Research levens redden? Misschien kan het wel!
Je komt er waarschijnlijk liever niet, maar als je dan toch een keer naar het ziekenhuis moet, ben je er liever ook weer zo snel mogelijk weg. In de praktijk ziet dit er helaas anders uit. Zo zit je bij de eerste hulp vaak lang te wachten tot je geholpen wordt, maar ook met een afspraak wordt er vaak nog wat tijd in de wachtkamer doorgebracht. Dit komt doordat de vraag naar deze hulp vaak lastig te voorspellen is. Echter is er met Operations Research nog veel te halen in de gezondheidszorg ondanks de onvoorspelbare […]
Estimated reading time: 6 minuten
How can we make legal cases go faster?
I was searching for a topic for my thesis, when the idea of investigating the performance measures of a court appeared. This was ideal since one of my relatives is a judge and I therefore could collect many information via him. As it turned out, there were some very important processes that can be optimized to save a lot of resources! Courts are tied to rules of the government regarding the time a case spends in a court. Yet, there is still space for their own policy. In this policy, they have to deal with […]
Estimated reading time: 8 minuten
Misdaden oplossen met een algoritme
Wanneer een moord of terroristische aanslag wordt gepleegd, is het aan de rechercheurs en politieagenten de taak in een zo kort mogelijke tijd zoveel mogelijk scenario’s af te gaan. Hierbij wordt rekening gehouden met onder andere het motief van de dader, de plaats delict en het moordwapen. Al gauw kunnen veel verhaallijnen worden weggestreept, omdat deze niet hetzelfde patroon vertonen als eerder vertoonde gevallen of simpelweg geen logische link bevatten. Vervolgens worden de mogelijke gebeurtenissen één voor één gecontroleerd. Stel je nu voor dat deze selectie niet door het brein van een rechercheur wordt uitgevoerd, […]
Highways, low costs
For most multichannel merchants, transportation of goods is the highest operational expense. Inbound freight costs for domestically sourced products typically range from 2% to 4% of gross sales, while for imported products, inbound freight costs 6% to 12% of gross sales. Outbound transportation costs typically on average 6% to 8% of net sales. So every business has to deal with high transportation costs nowadays. City logistics City logistics, also called urban freight distribution, is the system and process by which goods are collected, transported, and distributed within urban environments. The urban freight system can include […]
Estimated reading time: 6 minuten