Media Coverage

An established code of ethical behavior for analytics professionals already exists.

That code is part and parcel of the Certified Analytics Professional Program (CAP) – a highly regarded professional certification for analytics practitioners managed by INFORMS – the largest international association of professionals in analytics and operations research.

Among other things, the code establishes certain standards for those who call themselves analytics professionals and guidelines for how they should behave and be judged by their peers and employers.

The operations research profession is now #2 in business jobs, up from #4 in 2015. O.R. has also risen to 18 from 20 in the list of 100 best jobs.

In 2008, thousands of children in China fell ill after drinking milk that had been adulterated with the chemical melamine. 

This scandal inspired Liying Mu, University of Delaware assistant professor of operations management, to study ways to eliminate this dangerous and common problem.

“Milk adulteration, such as by adding, water, detergent or starch to milk, has been widely reported in many developing countries,” Mu said. “What are the reasons for those adulterations? And how can we solve the problem?”

In two papers published in top journals Management Science and Production and Operations Management, Mu’s team found three key reasons behind the milk adulteration problem, as well as a number of creative solutions.

Have a look for yourself at the five jobs with the highest percentage of women working in the profession...

3. Operations Research Analysts

• Percentage of women employed: 55.4%
• Mean annual wage: $82,940

These analysts use mathematical and analytical methods to help organizations solve complex problems, from using statistics to help inform decisions to gathering input from employees. Most operations research analysts have master’s degrees in operations research, engineering, computer science, mathematics or physics. Some entry-level positions are open to those with bachelor’s degrees.

This field only has 55.4% female workers, but that is still a considerable amount when looking at women in STEM. The reason for this, says analyst Laurie M. Orlov in her article on cio.com, is that jobs in the business technology arena capitalize on women’s greatest strengths in the workplace: “communication, collaboration and problem solving.”

Giving extra bed nets to children weakened by lack of food could significantly curb child deaths from malaria, according to a mathematical model revealed last month.
A study published in the Malaria Journal found that distributing insecticide-treated bed nets and supplementary food to undernourished children aged from six months to five years could help prevent their deaths from malaria. This is because children with malnutrition are much more likely than healthy children to succumb to the disease, the paper states.

The model proposed by Milinda Lakkam and [former Operations Research Editor-in-Chief and INFORMS Fellow] Lawrence Wein, two mathematicians at Stanford University in the United States, shows that such targeted distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets is better at reducing malaria deaths than random distribution. In one tested scenario, where malaria transmission was pegged as seasonal and intermittent, the distribution of bed nets specifically to undernourished children achieved a 69 per cent reduction in malaria mortality.