Media Coverage

Media articles featuring INFORMS members in the news.

Most Recent Media Coverage

Topic
Cardinals vs. Astros: An Analytics Morality Tale

Cardinals vs. Astros: An Analytics Morality Tale

June 30, 2015

As Post-Dispatch baseball writer Derrick Goold aptly reported in coverage of FBI allegations about the St. Louis Cardinals hacking scouting reports of the Houston Astros, this baseball drama contains a story about the increasingly competitive world of sports analytics. It is also a wake-up call for analytics professionals and other business leaders, not just in professional sports but across numerous industries, who have a vested interest in ensuring that this growing technical field adheres to stringent ethical guidelines and professional standards.

ManSci study: It's OK for male execs to ask directions and business advice

June 26, 2015

[University of Pittsburgh Prof. Dave] Lebel says research has found that it can be easier to ask for help when you turn it into advice seeking. In a study published in the June 2015 issue of Management Science, researchers from Harvard Business School and Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania found that advice-seeking differs from other help-seeking behaviors because you’re eliciting information for a course of action, retaining the decision-making process, and implying that the values of the advice seeker is similar to the adviser.

"Asking for a recommendation can feel flattering to the other person," says Lebel.

Your Guide to Analytics Patents

June 24, 2015

Analytics may be a young profession but it is taking off, and its growth is evident in the rapid increase in analytics patents that have been granted by the U.S. Patent Office. As an analytics professional, you may find that patents play an important part in your life -- the 40-plus patents that we co-invented at IBM were front and center for us.

Knowing the patenting process can be important for you and your company’s success, protecting your most valuable work. And if you want to learn about advanced analytics, the patent literature is an important source of information.

In a study we wrote with Troy White of Clarkson University that has just been published in the INFORMS journal Interfaces, we examined keywords relevant to descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics found in U.S. patents that were issued between 2002 and 2013.

OrgSci study: How some men fake an 80-hr work week

Imagine an elite professional services firm with a high-performing, workaholic culture. Everyone is expected to turn on a dime to serve a client, travel at a moment’s notice, and be available pretty much every evening and weekend. It can make for a grueling work life, but at the highest levels of accounting, law, investment banking and consulting firms, it is just the way things are.

Except for one dirty little secret: Some of the people ostensibly turning in those 80- or 90-hour workweeks, particularly men, may just be faking it.

Many of them were, at least, at one elite consulting firm studied by Erin Reid, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. It’s impossible to know if what she learned at that unidentified consulting firm applies across the world of work more broadly. But her research, published in the academic journal Organization Science, offers a way to understand how the professional world differs between men and women, and some of the ways a hard-charging culture that emphasizes long hours above all can make some companies worse off.

Media Contact

Ashley Smith
Public Affairs Coordinator
INFORMS
Catonsville, MD
[email protected]
443-757-3578

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Artificial Intelligence

Why 23andMe’s Genetic Data Could Be a ‘Gold Mine’ for AI Companies

Why 23andMe’s Genetic Data Could Be a ‘Gold Mine’ for AI Companies

TIME, March 26, 2025

The genetic testing company 23andMe, which holds the genetic data of 15 million people, declared bankruptcy on Sunday night after years of financial struggles. This means that all of the extremely personal user data could be up for sale—and that vast trove of genetic data could draw interest from AI companies looking to train their data sets, experts say.

Healthcare

Want to reduce the cost of healthcare? Start with our billing practices.

Want to reduce the cost of healthcare? Start with our billing practices.

The Hill, March 11, 2025

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as the new secretary of Health and Human Services, is the nation’s de facto healthcare czar. He will have influence over numerous highly visible agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, among others. Given that healthcare is something that touches everyone’s life, his footprint of influence will be expansive. 

We all benefit from and are hurt by health insurance claim denials

We all benefit from and are hurt by health insurance claim denials

Atlanta Journal Constitution, January 23, 2025

Health insurance has become necessary, with large and unpredictable health care costs always looming before each of us. Unfortunately, the majority of people have experienced problems when using their health insurance to pay for their medical care. Health insurance serves as the buffer between patients and the medical care system, using population pooling to mitigate the risk exposure on any one individual.

Supply Chain

How Small Restaurants Are Dealing With Record Egg Prices

How Small Restaurants Are Dealing With Record Egg Prices

InfluentialMag, March 26, 2025

Bird flu outbreaks that wiped out about 15 percent of the nation’s egg-laying chickens and drove wholesale egg prices to a peak of more than $8.50 a dozen in February have vexed grocery shoppers and prompted big breakfast chains to add surcharges to diners’ checks. But for owners of small eateries, paying double or triple for an ingredient they crack by the hundreds each day could potentially put them out of business.

Climate