“Decisions,Decisions.....”

The decision analyst can provide valuable support to the decisionmaking process and, increasingly, the impact of this support is becoming more forceful through the use of decision support software packages available on microcomputers. What are the opportunities for using decision support software and what software is currently available? This paper discusses these questions and outlines the part decision support software can play, its value to the decisionmaker, and some of the pitfalls in practical application.     

Optimal Investment Decisions

A discrete investment model of a production project is considered. Stoppage and recovery of production are allowed. The project is scrapped if the maintenance costs exceed some limit. The optimal maintenance cost threshold is calculated.     

Reflective Pathways: Analysis of an Urban Science Teaching Field Experience on Noyce Scholar‐Science Education Awardees' Decisions to Teach Science in a High‐Need New York City School

Awardees of the National Science Foundation's Noyce Scholars funds are required to teach science in high‐need urban or rural school districts upon graduation. The purpose of this research was to analyze the reflective considerations that distinguish preservice Noyce Scholar science education majors committed to teaching in high‐need New York City (NYC) schools from those committed to high‐need rural careers. Essays designed to expose their (n = 22) considerations of teaching in NYC written before, immediately after, and two weeks following a one‐week cultural and science teaching internship experience were coded to reveal distinguishing reflective thought patterns. The results showed that those (16/22) whose final essay showed commitment to NYC teaching viewed themselves positively as NYC teachers and that increases in positive self‐perceptions were paralleled by increases in affinity toward living in NYC and NYC schools. Those not inclined to NYC teaching (6/22) expressed increasingly negative views of themselves as NYC teachers, NYC life, and urban education generally. The research provides insights into what Noyce Scholar undergraduates in science education think about when considering a teaching career in urban school districts.     

Practicing Reform‐Based Science Curriculum in an Urban Classroom: A Hispanic Elementary School Teacher's Thinking and Decisions

This study explores the thinking and decisions of Vera (pseudonym), a Hispanic elementary teacher, while she enacted a reform‐based science curriculum in an urban school in the southern United States. Vera's thinking, decisions, experiences, and practices were documented over a 2‐year period. Using the data collected from semistructured interviews, participant observations and classroom documents, a rich and complex case study of Vera is developed in this paper. This case study describes how Vera makes curricular choices from reform‐based science curricula such as the LiFE curriculum; how she enacts those choices to empower poor urban minority students; how Vera believes that preparing students for the high‐stakes test is empowering because it ensures continued schooling for students; how, for Vera, teaching connected science using students' lived experiences is a risky act; and how she uses negotiation in her science teaching.     

Practicing Reform‐Based Science Curriculum in an Urban Classroom: A Hispanic Elementary School Teacher's Thinking and Decisions

This study explores the thinking and decisions of Vera (pseudonym), a Hispanic elementary teacher, while she enacted a reform‐based science curriculum in an urban school in the southern United States. Vera's thinking, decisions, experiences, and practices were documented over a 2‐year period. Using the data collected from semistructured interviews, participant observations and classroom documents, a rich and complex case study of Vera is developed in this paper. This case study describes how Vera makes curricular choices from reform‐based science curricula such as the LiFE curriculum; how she enacts those choices to empower poor urban minority students; how Vera believes that preparing students for the high‐stakes test is empowering because it ensures continued schooling for students; how, for Vera, teaching connected science using students' lived experiences is a risky act; and how she uses negotiation in her science teaching.     

Randomized Decisions in Chance-Constrained Programming

Bhattacharyya and Mukherjee have both considered a particular joint randomized decision problem in chance-constrained programming. This paper shows a general approach for solving a large class of similar problems.     

Statistics: Decisions through Data

Abstract

Regression Graphics: Ideas for Studying Regressions Through Graphics by R. Dennis Cook, New York: Wiley, 1998, xviii + 349 pp. Reviewed by William G. Jacoby

Misused Statistics: Second Edition, Revised and Expanded by H.F. Spirer, L. Spirer, and A.J. Jaffe, New York: Dekker, 1998. Reviewed by Arnold Barnett     

Programming for Optimal Decisions.

Journal of the Operational Research Society -     

Modelling Cooperative Advertising Decisions in Franchising

Advertising fee decisions in franchise systems are a frequent source of conflict between franchisors and franchisees. Such disagreements persist because the win-win potential of vertical cooperative advertising is not well appreciated. Our paper introduces a formal normative approach for analyzing, understanding and subsequently making these vertical cooperative advertising decisions within a franchising context in a manner that results in optimal system-wide returns. The model demonstrates that cooperative determination of franchisor's and franchisee's advertising contributions may yield superior payoffs for both exchange partners than the total payoff if the franchisor and franchisee seek to optimize their individual objective functions. Three types of models are developed and evaluated (i.e. deterministic, stochastic and under conditions of differing perceptions of the sales response functions to advertising). Conclusions hold under all three model variants. Industry implications are also presented.     

An Automatic Model for Purchase Decisions

The paper describes a decision-making model to control the entire expenditure by Rolls-Royce Aero Engine Division with outside suppliers. The project began as an “investigation into economic order quantities”, and expanded into an automatic decision-making package for determining the size of orders to be placed on suppliers, the length of time into the future these orders should stretch, the best price break information to ask for, and the extent to which changes in demand within Rolls-Royce should be suppressed to cushion the suppliers from unnecessary fluctuations. A conservative estimate of savings which result from implementing a model of this nature is that the purchase bill is reduced by at least 5 per cent and the inventory by somewhere in the region of 15 per cent.     

Effective New Product Decisions for Supermarkets

Current methods by which supermarkets decide which new products to stock are reviewed. Certain limitations of these subjective and ad hoc procedures are suggested and an alternative approach based on a screening technique is developed. The parameters of this method are shown to depend explicitly upon the observed attributes of past successful products and the opportunity costs associated with the decision of the supermarket buyer.It is demonstrated how the structure of the problem could lead naturally to its formulation in terms of a modified form of classificatory analysis. The value and economy of this approach are illustrated and discussed.