Media Coverage

Media articles featuring INFORMS members in the news.

Most Recent Media Coverage

Topic

Edelman Award Presented to Syngenta by INFORMS Exec Dir Moore at Iowa Sate

November 30, 2015

Joe Byrum feels a little bit like Billy Beane in “Moneyball.”

Beane, for those who don’t follow baseball, was the general manager who put an emphasis on mathematics and advanced technology when putting together his team. He started looking at numbers and changing his approach to the game.

Byrum, head of seeds product development for soybeans at Syngenta, has helped his company to push advanced analytics in the soybean breeding process.

“It’s the ‘Moneyball’ approach,” he said, describing a data-driven analysis approach that helped the company win the 2015 Franz Edelman award presented by the Institute for Operation Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

Predicting NCAA Football Standings

November 25, 2015

[Incoming INFORMS Vice President Laura] Albert McLay, a professor in the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department, has been using her knowledge of math models and sports analytics to predict which teams are most likely to make the four-team tournament crowning college football’s national champion. She posts the weekly rankings on her blog, Badger Bracketology.

Now in her second year projecting the playoff, McLay says the statistical concepts she uses are some of the same ones she teaches her students in the classroom. She plans to start modeling the NCAA men’s basketball tournament this season.

Possible cause of Russian jet crash

November 12, 2015

What does preliminary information say about the crash of the passenger jet flying over the Sinai Peninsula? Was there an explosive device? INFORMS Treasurer Sheldon Jacobson, an aviation security expert, discusses the possibilities in this streaming video interview.

What's the value of a win in college sports?

As the debate continues over whether college student-athletes should be paid for their on-field performances, a new study from Harvard Business School reveals just how much intercollegiate football and basketball programs contribute to a school’s bottom line.

The quantitative link between game day and payday is courtesy of Assistant Professor Doug J. Chung, who reviewed 117 schools with Division I football and basketball teams, matching athletic performance with revenue flow covering an 11-year period. The findings were jaw-dropping—winning just one more football game in a season, for example, could bump revenues by as much as $3 million for a high-powered program like Alabama or Michigan.

Chung details the correlation between wins on the field and wins for a school’s piggy bank in his paper, How Much Is a Win Worth? An Application to Intercollegiate Athletics, forthcoming in Management Science.

Why a college football win is worth millions

November 12, 2015

In a forthcoming paper in the journal Management Science, Harvard professor Doug Chung puts a dollar figure on the value of each additional win for big-time college football programs. He finds that each additional win creates a bump of about $3 million, through increases in revenue streams like ticket and merchandise sales, television contracts, and booster donations.

Media Contact

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

Resoundingly Human Podcast

An audio journey of how data and analytics save lives, save money and solve problems.

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

Experts warn logistics industry stakeholders to make contingency plans

Experts warn logistics industry stakeholders to make contingency plans

Seafood Source, March 10, 2025

In their March 2025 forecasts, shipping and logistics experts are warning those who rely on the industry to expect continued disruption, and in order to survive a chaotic landscape, they are advising businesses to spend money conservatively, work with trusted partners, and make comprehensive contingency plans.

Climate