Herbert J. Bernstein Professor of Computer Science Dept. of Mathematics and Computer Science, 1300 William Floyd Parkway, B111B, Shirley, NY 11967

22912 MTH 1007 Operations Research -- Spring 2012 On Line Course Assignments

This web page is http://www.bernstein-plus-sons.com/.dowling/MTH1007S12/MTH1007_Syllabus.html
Copyright © 2009, 2012 Herbert J. Bernstein and other parties. All rights reserved.

• Assignment #1, assigned Friday, 27 January 2012, due Friday, 3 February and Friday 10 February 2012
  • Be certain to get your text books no later than 3 February.
  • Read Chapter 1 of Abramson, Cosares and Rispoli, pages 1 - 52. Do all the problems, checking your work on the problems with answers at the back of the book.
  • Review the following Khan Academy Lectures. You should already be familiar with many of these topics, but it will be worth your while to go through this again to have some of the tools you need for this course, especially the normal distribution. If you are certain you have all this material well in hand, you may go straight to the last three lectures on the normal distribution, but you must at least review those last three lectures:
    • Lectures you should review:
      • statistics--the-average
      • statistics--sample-vs--population-mean
      • statistics--variance-of-a-population
      • statistics--sample-variance
      • statistics--standard-deviation
      • statistics--alternate-variance-formulas
      • introduction-to-random-variables
      • probability-density-functions
      • binomial-distribution-1
      • binomial-distribution-2
      • binomial-distribution-3
      • binomial-distribution-4
      • expected-value--e-x
      • expected-value-of-binomial-distribution
      • poisson-process-1
      • poisson-process-2
      • law-of-large-numbers
    • Lectures you must review:
      • normal-distribution-excel-exercise
      • ck12-org-normal-distribution-problems--qualitative-sense-of-normal-distributions
      • ck12-org-normal-distribution-problems--z-score
  • Read the notes on Probability
  • Read the notes on Spreadsheets
  • Read the notes on Making Decisions
  • Read the notes on Break Even Analysis
  • No later than 3 February, take MTH1007_Quiz_1.html.
  • Read the notes on Risk Analysis
  • No later than 10 February, take MTH1007_Quiz_2.html.

• Assignment #2, assigned Friday, 10 February 2012, due Friday, 17 February and Friday, 24 February 2012.
  • Read Chapter 2 of Abramson, Cosares and Rispoli. Do all the problems, checking your work on the problems with answers at the back of the book.
  • Read the notes on Choosing Among Alternatives
  • Carefully watch Kaplan ACCA F5 Masterclass and take notes.
  • Carefully watch Khan Academy Introduction to Conditional Probability
  • Carefully watch Khan Academy More on conditional probability. Touch on Bayes' Theorem.
  • Carefully watch Khan Academy Introduction to Bayes' Theorem.
  • Carefully watch Bayes' Theorem Introduction and take notes.
  • Read Wikipedia Decision Tree Article and take notes.
  • Read Wikipedia Utility Article and take notes.
  • After you have made it through section 2.2, but no later than 17 February 2012, do Quiz 3.
  • After you have completed the readings, but no later than 24 February 2012, do Quiz 4.

• Assignment #3, assigned Friday, 24 February 2012, due Friday, 2 March and Friday, 9 March 2012.
  • Read Chapter 3 of Abramson, Cosares and Rispoli. Do all the problems, checking your work on the problems with answers at the back of the book.
  • In order to do this chapter, you need to be comfortable working with spreadsheets. Reread the notes on SpreadSheets
  • If you will be using OpenOffice Calc, view open office and, whether you will be using OpenOffice Calc or Excel carefully read LeanOpenOffice.org Multiple Operations Tutorial
  • If you will be using Microsoft Excel, view Microsoft Excel Tutorial for Beginners #1 - Overview
    Microsoft Excel Tutorial for Beginners #2 - Get Started and, whether you will be using Excel or OpenOffice Calc, carefully watch What-if Analysis in Excel with a 2-input data table and carefully read Excel Data Tables
  • Read the notes on Simulation
  • After you have made it through section 3.2, but no later than 2 March 2012, do Quiz 5.
  • After you have complete the readings, but no later than 9 March 2012, do Quiz 6.

• Assignment #4, assigned Friday, 9 March 2012, due Monday, 27 March, Monday 2 April and Friday 20 April 2012.
  • Read Chapter 4 of Abramson, Cosares and Rispoli. Do all the problems, checking your work on the problems with answers at the back of the book.
  • In addition to reading the Chapter, it is important also to view the following lecture videos from Lecture Series on Fundamentals of Operations Research by Prof.G.Srinivasan, Department of Management Studies, IIT Madras and take notes:
    Lec-1 Introduction to Linear Programming Formulations,
    Lec-2 Linear Programming Formulations (Contd...),
    Lec-3 Linear Programming Solutions- Graphical Methods,
    Lec-4 Linear Programming Solutions - Simplex Algorithm,
    Lec-5 Simplex Algorithm-Minimization Problems
    Lec-6 Lec-6 Simplex Algorithm - Initialization and Iteration,
    Lec-7 Simplex Algorithm - Termination,
    Lec-8 Introduction to Duality,
    Lec-9 Primal Dual Relationships, Duality Theorems,
    Lec-10 Dual Variables and the Simplex Tables
    
  • Given the difficulty of the subject and this massive set of videos, it will take a month to cover this material, a month that overlaps Spring break, so there will be 3 quizzes, one due on Monday 27 March, one due on Monday, 2 April March, and one due on Friday 20 April. The original schedule of 4 quizzes was modified to help student catch up on past quizzes.
  • Catch up on past quizzes.
  • Do Quiz 7 on or before Monday, 27 March 2012.
  • Do Quiz 8 on or before Friday, 30 March 2012.
  • Do Quiz 9 on or before Friday, 20 April 2012.

• Assignment #5, assigned Friday, 20 April 2012, Friday, 27 April 2012.
  • You should now have completed reading the text and the videos. You will have one more review quiz and then a final exam. The quiz is Quiz 10. To get ready for it, you should review all the material above. The two most difficult topics are Bayesean analysis and the Simplex method. Pay special attention to those.

• Final Exam The final exam will be a 2 hour Skype-supervised session, from 8 to 10 pm on Monday 7 May 2012. In addition to the 2 hour exam, there will be an additional linear programming problem to do for extra credit over the following 48 hours. To get credit for your solution, you will have to explain your solution to the instructor in a Skype video sesssion or face-to-face. Doing that one problem well and being able to explain your solution well would be enough to guarantee a grade for the course of no less than a B and perhaps better.

  For the final you will need a computer with a webcam, Skype installed and your Dowling student ID. If you cannot be available then, you must arrange an alternate date for the eaxm with the instructor. You must make the arrangements on or before 1 May 2012. All work to be considered for grading must have been completed and turned in no later than 5 pm on Friday, 11 May 2012.

  If you have difficulty with this schedule, please contact the instructor immediately.

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  Updated 19 April 2012.