Talk:Operations research

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This sentence, which opens the definition, is extremely broad, pedantic, and could be applied to numerous disciplines. The end result is it's basically meaningless. Someone with greater depth of knowledge should revise

- "Operations research, or operational research in British usage, is a discipline that deals with the application of advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions.[1] " — Preceding unsigned comment added by Witty al (talk • contribs) 17:35, 10 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

I will look for and, as I find it. add some material that has not been previously referred to. What I see parallels what is referred to here as "British usage" but it isn't simply British that was left out. I see an additional source and two tie-in wiki topics could be included. 1) An additional source for Operations research is with regard to the US Navy and some higher education and it seems to be missing here. Today, the Naval Postgraduate School npu.edu in fact has an entire section on operations research and there is a history to it along with the aforementioned British usage. 2) Major components of OR are concerned with "logistics" (another wikipedia topic) and process optimization. A lot of material on process optimization has recently emerged and studied under the rubric of "data engineering" also a wikipedia topic. Pythologist (talk) 18:38, 23 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

I have updated this section with some of the classic books in the field, so that somebody interested in reading the pioneering works in the discipline doesn't have to go searching around for them. Obviously, there are about a million articles that could have been added to this list, but it would have run on forever if they were included.

I listed the most revered textbooks in the field. Harvey Wagner's textbook won the Lanchester prize, and Hillier and Lieberman's book is currently in its 10th edition. I also took out (and I know this is going to be controversial), all of the other textbooks, simply because all of these textbooks cover virtually the same topics, and while I have nothing against any of them, listing them all is duplicative.

Finally, I included books for those interested in the history of the discipline, without wanting to get too far into the mathematics of the discipline.

I've marked the § Second World War origin as "dubious"; it has no citation. What about the previous section (§ Historical origins)'s statement that

Modern operational research originated at the Bawdsey Research Station in the UK in 1937 and was the result of an initiative of the station's superintendent, A. P. Rowe.

which is supported by a cite of Britannica Online? These can't both be true! yoyo (talk) 14:39, 21 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

In his later books Edgerton argues that the methods and techniques of OR predate WW2 by some decades and that it only became a coherent academic discipline in WW2: prior to that point industrialists and time-and-motion men were doing it quite happily for many years without the benefit of academic oversight. It's like saying America didn't exist until Europeans discovered it. Similarly OR existed for many years before academics discovered it. Regards, Anameofmyveryown (talk) 01:37, 21 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

The 'operations' part of the term refers to military operations not to industrial or similar 'time and motion' studies. It means using scientists in close co-operation with operational military or air force units such as fighter and bomber squadrons, naval units, etc., in order to solve specific problems or to improve effectiveness of these units. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.8.126.91 (talk) 19:24, 21 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Pesquisa Operacional and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 February 16#Pesquisa Operacional until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 22:17, 16 February 2022 (UTC)Reply