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                                                         Seminar
             Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management
                                  The Chinese University of Hong Kong

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Title : Stochastics in Optimization Models - Will Sensitivity Analysis Do?
     
Speaker : Professor Stein W. Wallace
    Molde University College
     
Date : February 9th, 2007 (Friday)
     
Time : 4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.
     
Venue : Room 513, MMW Engineering Building
    (Engineering Building Complex Phase 2)
    CUHK
     

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Abstract:
 

Most decisions are made under some uncertainty about the future. Most models do not take that explicitly into account. Is that a minor issue or a major problem? The purpose of this lecture is to illustrate how deterministic models, even combined with sensitivity analysis, what-if-sessions or other similar tools, can lead to rather bad decisions. Using one example from network design and one from scheduling, I show how solutions from deterministic models differ from those of stochastic models in systematic and recognizable ways. I also try to show ways forward in terms of capturing these differences without solving (unsolvable) stochastic optimization problems. So the overall goal of the underlying research is to find good (if not optimal) solutions to stochastic optimization problems without solving such problems.


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Biography:
 

Stein W. Wallace is professor of quantitative logistics at Molde University College, Norway. He holds a dr.scient in informatics from the University of Bergen (1984). His main interest is on decision-making under uncertainty, with an emphasis on stochastic programming. He has published three books and more than 55 articles in scientific journals. He is associate editor of INFORMS J. on Computing, Optimization and Engineering and the stochastic programming e-print series. He has chaired the Committee on Stochastic Programming (the international society for the field), and held elected and appointed positions in INFORMS and The Mathematical Programming Society. He has held visiting positions in the USA (U of Texas, U of Washington, U of California at Davis, Columbia), Sweden (U of Linköping), Switzerland (U of Z┨rich), France (INP Grenoble), and U of Iceland. He is presently on a sabbatical leave. He spent the fall at Columbia Business School in NY and IBM Watson Research Center at Yorktown Heights, and is now at the Chinese U of HK.


************************* ALL ARE WELCOME ************************

     
Enquiries : Bolin Ding or Jeffrey Xu Yu
  : Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management
    CUHK
Website : http://www.se.cuhk.edu.hk/~seg5810
Email : seg5810@se.cuhk.edu.hk
     

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