A Compendium of Web Site Reviews


Europe Site    Site for Asia    Site for Middle East   UK Site    USA Site


Introduction: Modern, web-based learning and computing provides the means for fundamentally changing the way in which statistical instruction is delivered to students. Multimedia learning resources combined with CD-ROMs and workbooks attempt to explore the essential concepts of a course by using the full pedagogical power of multimedia. Many Web sites have nice features such as interactive examples, animation, video, narrative, and written text. These web sites are designed to provide students with a "self-help" learning resource to complement the traditional textbook.

Online learning education does for knowledge what just-in-time delivery does for manufacturing: It delivers the right tools and parts when you need them. The Java applets are probably the most phenomenal way of simplifying various concepts by way of interactive processes. These applets help bring into life every concept from central limit theorem to interactive random games and multimedia applications.

Modern, web-based learning and computing provides the means for fundamentally changing the way in which decision science, operations/operational research, and statistics instruction is delivered to students. Many Web sites have nice features such as interactive examples, animation, video, narrative, and written text. These web sites are designed to provide students with a "self-help" learning resource to complement the traditional textbook.

The following compilation summarizes currently available public domain web sites offering instructional material. While some sites may have been missed, I feel that this listing is fully representative. I would welcome information regarding any further sites for inclusion, E-mail. Kindly e-mail me your comments, suggestions, and concerns. Thank you.

Professor Hossein Arsham   

To search the site, try Edit | Find in page [Ctrl + f]. Enter a word or phrase in the dialogue box, e.g. "statistics" or "project management" If the first appearance of the word/phrase is not what you are looking for, try Find Next.



   Companion Sites:

  • Business Statistics
  • Excel For Statistical Data Analysis
  • Topics in Statistical Data Analysis
  • Time Series Analysis and Business Forecasting
  • Computers and Computational Statistics
  • Questionnaire Design and Surveys Sampling
  • Probabilistic Modeling
  • Systems Simulation
  • Probability and Statistics Resources
  • Success Science
  • Leadership Decision Making
  • Linear Programming (LP) and Goal-Seeking Strategy
  • Artificial-variable Free LP Solution Algorithms
  • Integer Optimization and the Network Models
  • Tools for LP Modeling Validation
  • The Classical Simplex Method
  • Zero-Sum Games with Applications
  • Computer-assisted Learning Concepts and Techniques
  • Linear Algebra and LP Connections
  • From Linear to Nonlinear Optimization with Business Applications
  • Sensitivity Region for LP Models
  • Zero Sagas in Four Dimensions
  • Business Keywords and Phrases
  • Collection of JavaScript E-labs Learning Objects
  • Decision Science Resources

    Basic Definitions
    By V. Easton and J. McColl, Contains glossary of basic terms and concepts.
    Basic principles of statistical analysis
    By Bob Baker, Basics concepts of statistical models, Mixed model, Choosing between fixed and random effects, Estimating variances and covariance, Estimating fixed effects, Predicting random effects, inference space, Conclusions, Some references.
    Calculus Applied to Probability and Statistics for Liberal Arts and Business Majors
    By Stefan Waner and Steven Costenoble, contains: Continuous Random Variables and Histograms; Probability Density Functions; Mean, Median, Variance and Standard Deviation.
    Academic Info
    Here is a wealth of information. Specific categories are included for a search within a subject. This is a good search by Keyword feature. You can type in anything and find historical, research, or location data.
    Data and Story Library
    It is an online library of datafiles and stories that illustrate the use of basic statistics methods.
    Descriptive Statistics Computation
    Enter a column of your data so that the mean, standard deviation, etc. will be calculated.
    Fisher's Exact Test
    By Øyvind Langsrud, To categorical variables with two levels.
    HyperStat Online
    By David Lane. It is an introductory-level statistics book.
    Academic Info
    Here is a wealth of information. Specific categories are included for a search within a subject. This is a good search by Keyword feature. You can type in anything and find historical, research, or location data.
    Interactive Statistics
    Contains some nice Java applets: guessing correlations, scatterplots, Data Applet, etc.
    Interactive Statistics Page
    By John Pezzullo, Web pages that perform mostly needed statistical calculations. A complete collection on: Calculators, Tables, Descriptives, Comparisons, Cross-Tabs, Regression, Other Tests, Power&Size, Specialized, Textbooks, Other Stats Pages.
    Academic Info
    Here is a wealth of information. Specific categories are included for a search within a subject. This is a good search by Keyword feature. You can type in anything and find historical, research, or location data.
    Introduction to Quantitative Methods
    By Gene Glass, A basic statistics course in the College of Education at Arizona State University.
    Introductory Statistics Demonstrations
    Topics such as Variance and Standard Deviation, Z-Scores, Z-Scores and Probability, Sampling Distributions, Standard Error, Standard Error and Z-score Hypothesis Testing, Confidence Intervals, and Power.
    The Introductory Statistics Course: A New Approach
    By D. Macnaughton. Some students frequently view statistics as the worst course taken in college. To address that problem, this paper proposes five concepts for discussion at the beginning of an introductory course: (1) entities, (2) properties of entities, (3) a goal of science: to predict and control the values of properties of entities, (4) relationships between properties of entities as a key to prediction and control, and (5) statistical techniques for studying relationships between properties of entities as a means to prediction and control. It is argued that the proposed approach gives students a lasting appreciation of the vital role of the field of statistics in scientific research. Successful testing of the approach in three courses is summarized.
    Java Applets
    By many contributors. Distributions, Area Under Normal Curves, Z Scores & the Normal Distribution. Probability & Stochastic Processes, ANOVA, Confidence Intervals, Regression, Spearman's rank correlation, T-test, Simple Least-Squares Regression, and Discriminant Analysis.
    Online Statistical Textbooks
    By Haiko Lüpsen.
    Power Analysis for ANOVA Designs
    By Michael Friendly, It runs a SAS program that calculates power or sample size needed to attain a given power for one effect in a factorial ANOVA design. The program is based on specifying Effect Size in terms of the range of treatment means, and calculating the minimum power, or maximum required sample size.
    Practice Questions for Business Statistics
    By Brian Schott, Over 800 statistics quiz questions for introduction to business statistics.
    Prentice Hall Statistics
    This site contains full description of the materials covers in the following books coauthored by Prof. McClave: A First Course In Statistics, Statistics, Statistics For Business And Economics, A First Course In Business Statistics.
    Probability Lessons
    Interactive probability lessons for problem-solving and actively.
    Probability Theory: The logic of Science
    By E. Jaynes. Plausible Reasoning, The Cox Theorems, Elementary Sampling Theory, Queer Uses for Probability Theory, The Entropy Principle, Ignorance Priors -- Transformation Groups, Decision Theory: Historical Survey, Orthodox Statistics: Historical Background, Principles and Pathology of Orthodox Statistics, Time Series Analysis and Auto regressive Models, Spectrum / Shape Analysis, Model Comparison and Robustness, and Computer Programs.
    Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics
    By David Lane et al., An introductory statistics course which uses Java script Monte Carlo.
    Sampling distribution demo
    By David Lane, Applet estimates and plots the sampling distribution of various statistics given population distribution, sample size, and statistic.
    Simple Regression
    Enter pairs of data so that a line, or curve can be fit to the data.
    Some experimental pages for teaching statistics, by Juha Puranen, contains some - different methods for visualizing statistical phenomena, such as Power and Box-Cox transformations.
    SPSS Tools
    By Raynald Levesque, An SPSS dedicated web site includes more than 525 free sample syntax, macros and scripts classified by purpose as well as Tips, FAQs, tutorials and a Newbie's Corner.
    Statlets: Download Academic Version (Free)
    Contains Java Applets for Plots, Summarize, One and two-Sample Analysis, Analysis of Variance, Regression Analysis, Time Series Analysis, Rates and Proportions, and Quality Control.
    Statistical Analysis Tools
    Part of Computation Tools of Hyperstat.
    Statistical Demos and Monte Carlo
    Provides demos for Sampling Distribution Simulation, Normal Approximation to the Binomial Distribution, and A "Small" Effect Size Can Make a Large Difference.
    Statistical Education Resource Kit
    By Laura Simon, This web page contains a collection of resources used by faculty in Penn State's Department of Statistics in teaching a broad range of statistics courses.
    Statistical Calculators
    Presided by UCLA, Material here includes: Power Calculator, Statistical Tables, Regression and GLM Calculator, Two Sample Test Calculator, Correlation and Regression Calculator, and CDF/PDF Calculators.
    Statistical Home Page
    By David C. Howell, This is a Home Page containing statistical material covered in the author's textbooks (Statistical Methods for Psychology and Fundamental Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences), but it will be useful to others not using those book. It is always under construction.
    Statistics
    This server will perform some elementary statistical tests on your data. Test included are Sign Test, McNemar's Test, Wilcoxon Matched-Pairs Signed-Ranks Test, Student-t test for one sample, Two-Sample tests, Median Test, Binomial proportions, Wilcoxon Test, Student-t test for two samples, Multiple-Sample tests, Friedman Test, Correlations, Rank Correlation coefficient, Correlation coefficient, Comparing Correlation coefficients.
    Statistics Homepage
    By StatSoft Co., Complete coverage of almost all topics
    Statistics: The Study of Stability in Variation
    Editor: Jan de Leeuw. It has components which can be used on all levels of statistics teaching. It is disguised as an introductory textbook, perhaps, but many parts are completely unsuitable for introductory teaching. Its contents are Introduction, Analysis of a Single Variable, Analysis of a Pair of Variables, and Analysis of Multi-variables.
    Statistics Every Writer Should Know
    By Robert Niles and Laurie Niles. Treatment of elementary concepts.
    Statistics Glossary
    By V. Easton and J. McColl, Alphabetical index of all major keywords and phrases.
    Statistics on the Web
    By Clay Helberg, Just as the Web itself seems to have unlimited resources, Statistics on the web must have hundreds of sites listing such statistical areas as: Professional Organizations, Institutes and Consulting Groups, Educational Resources, Web courses, and others too numerous to mention. One could literally shop all day finding the joys and treasures of Statistics!
    Statistics To Use
    By T. Kirkman, Among others it contains computations on: Mean, Standard Deviation, etc., Student's t-Tests, chi-square distribution test, contingency tables, Fisher Exact Test, ANOVA, Ordinary Least Squares, Ordinary Least Squares with Plot option, Beyond Ordinary Least Squares, and Fit to data with errors in both coordinates.
    Tables
    By William Knight, Tables for: Confidence Intervals for the Median, Binomial Coefficients, Normal, T, Chi-Square, F, and other distributions.
    SURFSTAT Australia
    By Keith Dear. Summarizing and Presenting Data, Producing Data, Variation and Probability, Statistical Inference, Control Charts.
    WWW Resources for Teaching Statistics
    By Robin Lock.
    Academic Info
    Here is a wealth of information. Specific categories are included for a search within a subject. This is a good search by Keyword feature. You can type in anything and find historical, research, or location data.
    A Tutorial on Integer
    This web site offers instruction on using integers in modeling and in problem solving programs. After an introduction, the site offers instruction on modeling with Integer Variables. This section includes several programs that involve modeling. There is a section that details with Solving Integer Programs and offers techniques and examples of Integer Programs. This site is very detailed and is organized like a textbook. It contains thought provoking information. However, it requires a large time commitment to finish the tutorial.
    Compendium of NP Optimization Problems
    This site, hosted by Professor Viggo Kann of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, offers a wide range of optimization problems. Most of them seemed too advanced for our OPRE class, but they certainly sounded most interesting, including "sequencing on one processor", "shop scheduling", and just about everything in "games and puzzles". In particular, the "Minimum Travel Robot Localization" seems like it'd be quite an interesting application of the traveling salesman problem (at least, that's the classic combinatoric problem I'd compare it to).
    Decision Making
    I liked this site, compiled by Carter McNamara, because of the wealth of information related to decision-making. We sometimes fall into the pit of focusing too much on the tools. The tools are very important, but only if they help in making a decision. The site is quite comprehensive and extensively addresses all aspects of the decision-making process - from properly defining the problem to non-technical and technical ways to solve the problem.
    Decision Theory and Decision Trees
    This terrific Web site is part of the MindTools site, offering a range of career-related analysis tools and references. The site also includes a smartly designed online bookstore. One of my favorite areas was "Techniques for Controlling Stress", but perhaps that's just because this is graduate school! Anyway, this particular area of the site has a cogent discussion about decision tree analysis: choosing between options by projecting likely outcomes. What I thought was so valuable is that they present a complex topic in a simple and straightforward manner. Of course, computer scientists are familiar with decision trees because they're flowcharts gussied up with some probabilities tossed into the mix!

    This Web site explains how to use decision trees to make decisions, which involves a lot of complex and sequential stages. The process is designed to teach people how to make accurate, balanced pictures of the risks and rewards that can result from various courses of action relating to a single problem. The website explains the uses of decision tree, and benefits. It also shows how to design a decision tree. It starts off explaining the basics of the drawing and then continues to teach the reader how to evaluate the decision tree. The site also explains the calculation of the tree values, uncertain outcome nodes, and the decision nodes. This site gives you useful information that is easy to understand.

    • Expected Value and Variance
    This web site explains and provides examples of expected value and variance of a random variable. You do need these measures when dealing with decision-making under risk. The example problems provided throughout the site are helpful to gain a more through understanding. Again, this site facilitates learning tools to aid in decision-making when the uncontrollable factors in the model must be predicted. A calculator is also available for computing risk measures such as standard deviation and coefficient of variation.
    Expert Choice
    This is a company that does operations research professionally, though they refer to a specific flavor of OR "analytic hierarchy process". The roster of employees is quite impressive, and the company states that "today, Expert is used to allocate over $30 billion a year for Government and commercial agencies worldwide." An impressive testimony to the value of OR and scientific decision making!
    Clinical Decision Making
    It is the home for a clinical decision making group that is part of MIT laboratory. Dr. Peter Szolovits is the Director of this group and is not the Webmaster. This is one of the important criteria mentioned by Kapoun. The site contains a few referenced papers for the viewer. There is a demo project that assists individuals with some decision making abilities regarding medical records. At the bottom of the opening page, there are links to projects that are currently being undertaken by the group. Overall, the site does not contain a lot of information related to managerial decision making. It is truly focused towards pure clinical decision making. However, the demo’s and a few of the projects are truly valuable in the area of medical decision making.
    Thinking on Paper: Guidelines for Documenting Medical Decision Making
    While this is not a complete Web site, it is noted to be of high value, and therefore it has been reviewed. The actual site belongs to the American Academy of Family Physicians. This page is an article on medical decision making. The article is extremely valuable because it contains various charts and tables that can assist with making a decision. The author sets up his decision making tools in the form of grids designed for the lay users. There are elements of medical decision making that outlines and quantifies the approach of decisions. The content follows all of Kapoun’s criteria. This is a highly reputable author and the contact is excellent for the business world in the medical business.
    Society for Medical Decision Making
    It is a site completely devoted to providing a rational and systematic approach to medical decision making. This site contains educational modules, research papers, critiques and various other documents to assist the clinician with an informed approach to the subject. There is a Journal on Medical Decision Making that belongs to this site. Articles from the magazine as well as independent authors may post their documents on this location. Conferences and other forums, including discussion boards, are hosted by this organization. The site is extremely valuable as it provide not only tools, but free educational presentations that users can learn about the topic. This site is very valuable to the clinician who needs additional information on medical decision making.
    Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making
    It is another good site that provides informational content on medical decision making. This site goes one step further than the others as it attempts to translate decision making theory to practical use by the clinician. While the authors claim the ease of use, it is complicated and the beginning user needs to understand how a theory works prior to understanding practical use. While this may appear to be a problem, the site is geared toward the clinician. Most health care practitioners have theory education throughout their graduate studies. This site is useful for any clinician as it takes the theoretical content and transforms it into a practical application.
    MedScape: Article
    This is another article on a much larger site. The site is MedScape and dedicates itself to the research endeavors in the healthcare arena. This article provides information on medical decision support systems. The content is well explained as it is an introduction to how the world of information technology can assist with clinical decisions. There are cited references that provide an excellent resource for the student on seeking further knowledge on the subject.
    Department of Medical Decision Making
    The site contains information on normative and clinical decision analysis and how they have influenced the area of medical decision making. The Web site belongs to a Netherlands University and this area if specifically the department on the subject. Articles and other informative documents provide content for the reviewer to gather facts regarding the history of medical decision making. This site acts as a gateway for learners to seek additional information. While the site is educational based, it lacks the feel of simplicity for the user. Research protocols and tools are available for the user to access in order to assist with the educational goals towards medical decision making. The usefulness of this site is unknown as it is a bit confusing. Some of the content is in a foreign language and thus it is hard to truly analyze the value.
    Fuzzy Logic in Medical Decision Making
    It is an article on a Web site that provides information on how fuzzy logic is intertwined with the area of medical decision making. This concept has been around since the early 70’s. This article provides a conceptual model that applies a theoretical model to the area of medical decision making. The good point about this site is the tables that have been provided. The tables are logical interpretations that a clinician can follow such as a “payoff” table. While this is only an article, there were some other searches that revealed info on the topic. Overall, the document was excellent. The site is primarily related to the area of health care. Throughout the review, it was noted that the Web does not contain much information related to decision making in the health care arena. While there are tools for scheduling, finance, purchases and other issues, there was an extremely limited amount of information on this topic. I was surprised at the lack of information on the Web. However, the review found that the information on the sites reviewed contained valuable information that is useful for the clinician.
    ExploreMath
    This site, put together by ExploreLearning, has a wide variety of interesting and compelling multimedia demonstrations of different mathematical concepts. Unfortunately, it does require Macromedia's Director plug-in so it might not work for everyone. I found their Linear Programming example quite interesting and relevant to the topic of the course this week.
    INFORMS
    Created by a merger of the Operations Research Society of America and The Institute of Management Sciences, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences offer a reasonably designed, highly informative Web site geared towards both the practitioner/member and OR students. I thought that the Student Union area was particularly interesting, and addressed many of the shortcomings of the BLS site discussed earlier. In particular, the many educational programs sounded quite interesting. Were I to choose a career path focused on OR, this site (and organization!) would clearly be an invaluable professional resource.
    IFORS
    Traveling to the other side of the planet, this site features information about dynamic, integer and linear programming, including a personally helpful tutorial on the basics of linear algebra. Hosted by (The International Federation of Operations Research Societies) at the University of Melbourne in Australia, the site offers lots of examples of different OR topics, organized into simple modules. One criticism I have of this site, however, is that everything is labeled by its OR jargon name, so if I didn't know what "Dijkstra's Algorithm" was, a module with that name would be less helpful. Similarly with "Royal Optimization" and "G/G/s Queues". Perhaps an introduction to all the material on the site would help overcome this limitation. However, the jargon that pervades this site was present even in the description of the virtual duality system: "the dual problems associated with given (numerical) instances of the primal." What Primal?
    Making Hard Decisions: Overcoming Serious Indecisiveness
    The goal of Professor Arsham's Overcoming Serious Indecisiveness site is to help illustrate how various facets of operations research can be applied to different types of tough decisions in life. It offers a wealth of articles on a variety of subjects in this area, and has some through-provoking examples and explanations. However, I did not find it to too helpful because it wasn't sufficiently succinct to make specific points, and didn't take advantage of the presentation features of the Web to highlight critical points and ideas. Instead of assigning this as a single reading, I would suggest that having each article be the basis of a discussion topic on Prometheus, one per week, would be a much more educational and provocative use of the content.
    Operational Research Society
    This web site for the Operational Research Society offers the most attractive visual design of all four sites reviewed this week, but had considerably less information - particularly for students - than the great INFORMS site. However, the study groups seemed most interesting, and if OR was a strong focus of my MBA studies, I would be quite likely to sign up for one. The book "Selected Readings in Operational Research for Developing Countries", offered in their online bookstore, sounded most interesting too. Nonetheless, this site offered little incentive for me to bookmark it for a future visit while in this course.
    http://www.densa.com/humor/business.html
    This site is a riot. It is full of useful terminology for surviving in business. Check it out, it’s good for a laugh! A link to http://www.densa.com/humor/definitions.html is also worth visiting.
    http://www.thebluebook.com/cl/all1350.htm
    The Blue Book is a resource utilized by construction professionals in the U.S. for information about suppliers. This site contains a description of the various names for critical path method, and a menu listing all states so that the search for companies who perform the critical path method of scheduling can be located. There were 47 companies listed in Maryland, and the site contains links to each company’s web sites where applicable. Advertisements from the Blue Book are also linked to the sites.
    http://www.mindtools.com/critpath.html
    This site is a good description of the use of the critical path method. In text form the method is described, then an example is given. Several charts are displayed and step by step the method is demonstrated. Dependencies are considered, and how to plot the method manually on graph paper is described carefully. This graphed result is not the final version, the site shows the “untidy draft analysis.” After analysis, the site demonstrates a completed GANTT chart and how to specify critical or non-critical activities. The PERT format is also demonstrated. A succinct summary completes the site.
    http://www.cityu.edu.hk/cityu/course/deptcurr/bccurr/bc5101.htm
    This site contains a description of BC5101 Production Management. A link to Courses offered by Department of Building and Construction 1999/2000 and a link to the Department of Building and Construction Home Page are at the bottom of the site. The course offerings at this university sound interesting.
    http://wwwtafe.lib.rmit.edu.au/bizman/courses/traineeship3/courses/bsacom401a/html/activity_1.2_cont.html
    This site contains a “fill in the bubble” online quiz about Project Management. The quiz checks your answers and tells how many you got right along with your score. The site contains useful links to a “learner guide” and a “study guide.” The site is well laid out, all links worked well, and the quiz was fun to try. Links to tutors and frequently asked questions showed me that the course is offered online from the School of Management (VET), Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne Vic 3001 Australia
    http://www.icaen.uiowa.edu/~ie272/ipnf_assignments.html
    This site from University of Iowa’s Industrial Engineering Department has a list of assignments linked and viewable with Adobe Acrobat. The site is nicely laid out and the assignments are good “practice” problems. The site is from the fall 1997 semester, however, and has not been updated since December 1997.
    http://www.cpmscheduling.com
    CPM Scheduling’s advertising home page is nicely laid out and informative. Links work quickly and easily. The importance of critical path method is described and explained. CPM’s mission, fee schedule, competitors, and projects are contained on the site.
    http://www.hproject.com
    This site is for HyperProject software, which performs PERT and CPM modeling on Macintosh computers utilizing the “C” programming language. How to order, specific information, and a comparison to Microsoft’s Project software is contained on the site. A downloadable demo disk is also available. A link to frequently asked questions was informative, the company is a family (4) business which formed after Apple disbanded its MacProject.
    http://www.turbocm.com
    Tubo CM is a consulting group in California with an impressive record of critical path method scheduling contracts. I was amazed at the money some businesses will spend to ensure that the scheduling is done correctly! The list of contracts gives a good idea of the different businesses that utilize critical path scheduling.
    http://www.tempestcompany.com
    Tempest Company is another advertising web page for a critical path method scheduling company. This company is located in Omaha, NE. This site is well laid out and informative about the construction consulting industry.
    Operations Research Analysts
    This site, managed by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, offered an interesting description of the prospects and tasks assigned to an operations research analyst. The information was presented in an attractive format, and the "search by occupation" invited visitors to explore and learn more about different occupations tracked by the Department. It was difficult to quantify "good job prospects", however; did that imply that 99/100 would find a good job, or 40/100? It was also interesting that they highlighted the problem that few jobs are titled "operations research analyst", yet didn't suggest common alternative titles for job seekers. I also found it interesting that the federal government was the second largest employer of OR analysts.
    Operations Research/Management Science Today
    The Web site from Lion Heart Publications for Operations Research/Management Science Today was very interesting reading, and the cover of the latest issue, with its "The Worst Day Ever" definitely piqued my interest! What's nice also is that the magazine issue itself shows up online a few weeks after the print publication is distributed to INFORMS members (from what I can glean on the site). Given my professional experience, I was particularly gratified to read the article "Web Services: OR's Newest Ally?"
    OR Courses
    A very good Web site. It is devoted to Operations Research, and it is an active site that is updated frequently. The home URL of this page also had a bountiful amount of information related to OR including companies providing OR services, societies, educational programs, computer programs, and more. I've also noticed while perusing other OR pages, that many have links to this site maintained by Michael Trick.
    OR Surf
    Wow, I really like the entry page to this site! The surfer heading down the information superhighway with the wave in the background is quite impressive, as is the list of OR/MS/DS topics listed in the contents. The pages from Northwestern really cover some basic and advanced questions that are appropriately answered within the pages.
    Probability: Different Schools of Thought on Probability Assessment
    The information provided by this Web site aids in the understanding of probability concepts. The site explains probabilities and its uses and then provides example problems. It also offers online tutorial for the topic. The site explains different school of thoughts in probabilities, combining events, estimated probabilities, empirical probability, abstract probability, etc. The site also contains links to review exercises, quizzes, and other mathematical topics. This site, like many others, refreshes your memory but also provides more knowledge of the probabilities.
    Probability Lessons
    This Web site was designed to teach predominately junior high school students about problem solving and the learning process. The site is designed to be interactive and allow users to apply knowledge they have learned in the site. It has various lessons that teach conditional probability, rules pertaining to probability, dependent events, etc. The lessons are designed in a simple manner that are easy to understand. If students select the wrong answer, they are allowed to make another selection. The site also contains links for tutoring, puzzles, other lessons and, so on.
    The Decision Analysis Society
    Though I first thought it was a joke, this Web site from the Duke Fuqua school of business is for a group of OR people working on the evolution of decision analysis and OR itself. I do have to point out that while they have a link "How to Join Us" they don't have a link "An Analysis of Why To Join Our Society", which seems like a natural!
    The Open Directory Project: Science:Math:Operations Research
    A part of the wonderful, completely volunteer-managed open directory project, this area offers a wealth of online resources for the operations researcher and student of OR. One of the most useful sections is the up-to-date listing of OR conferences. A highly recommended site.
    The Science and Technology of Decision-Making
    This web site is for a course by Dr. David Bernstein of Princeton University, and really digs into the topic of decision making, though a closer look seems to suggest that it's really a more general OR Topics include network problems, traveling salesman problems, and a variety of decision making problems. I particularly enjoyed reading about the inventory management discussion lab 7 "Why does the store have plenty of Air Bobs, but no Air Jordans?" Of course, question three on that page should be updated to add the Microsoft Xbox, but otherwise it was very interesting!
    Virtual Library
    There is a lot of interesting information at this site. I learned how mathematical tools were used to disprove coded messages in the Torah. I took a quick tour of the Geometry Center and visited the History of Mathematics site. This site's information on application of math to real-world issues impressed me.
    WORMS
    WORMS stands for World-Wide-Web for Operations Research and Management Science. The site was started in early 1995 and was intended to provide on online resource to those in the OR and MS disciplines. At that time, there were not many Internet sites set up for this purpose. The person behind the site is Moshe Sniedovich at the University of Melbourne. Moshe's efforts helped to kick off the tutOR effort, of which he is rightly proud. You will like this site for several reasons:
    • It was a pioneer site for OR and MS
    • It led to the tutOR effort
    • The author's writing style is engaging and humorous

    Yahoo: Operations Research
    A quick look at the Yahoo: Operations Research web site displayed fifteen links to a variety of OR web sites. From Applied Management Science to FAQ Linear programming, everything you might desire is located within these pages. This site even has OR job opportunities (Michael Trick's Operations Research Page - Job Information - Analytic Recruiting or INFORMS Professional Opportunities). Wow!
    The Copyright Statement: The fair use, according to the 1996 Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia, of materials presented on this Web site is permitted for non-commercial and classroom purposes only.
    This site may be mirrored intact (including these notices), on any server with public access, and linked to other Web pages. All files are available at http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/home.ubalt.edu/ntsbarsh/Business-stat for mirroring.

    Kindly e-mail me your comments, suggestions, and concerns. Thank you.

    Professor Hossein Arsham   

    This site was launched on 2/25/1994, and its intellectual materials have been thoroughly revised on a yearly basis. The current version is the 8th Edition. All links are checked once a month.

    Back to Dr Arsham's Home Page

    EOF: Ó 1994-2015.