Operational Research and Regulation: Theory and Practice

In this Blackett Lecture, Professor Littlechild, Director General of Electricity Supply in the UK's Office of Electricity Regulation, renews acquaintance with some models he has developed over the years, introduces some models he has recently met, and discusses models that it would seem to be worthwhile developing. He concludes that for all concerned in the electricity industry, success depends on ever improving decision-making, in which OR has a vital role.     

Aziridinylketones and their cyclic anils. 12

We have measured the PMR spectra of 5, 7-diaryl-1, 4-diazabicyclo[4. ].O]hept-4-enes. We have studied the structure of the 5-(4-nitrophenyl)-7-phenyl derivative by x-ray diffraction. We show that the six-membered heterocycle has the half-chair form. The 6-H and 7-H protons of the aziridine ring are trans, while the 7-aryl is exo relative to the six-membered ring. Introduction of substituents into the aromatic ring has practically no effect on the geometry of the bicycle.Translated from Khimiya Geterotsiklicheskikh Soedinenii, No. 8, pp. 1117–1124, August, 1994.For Communication 11, see [1].     

Methylphosphonothionates of N-(β-hydroxypropyl)anabasine — Synthesis,structure, and sensitivity of cholinesterases to them

The synthesis has been effected of alkyl anabasinoprop-2-yl and alkyl piperidinoprop-2-yl methylphosphonothionates. It has been shown by¹H,¹³C and³¹P NMR spectroscopies that the anabasine derivatives exist in solution as four diastereomeric forms. The kinetics of the interaction of the compounds synthesized with two types of cholinesterases has been studied.A. S. Sadykov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Fax 627071. Translated from Khimiya Prirodnykh Soedinenii, No. 1, pp. 70–74, January–February, 1994.     

Spin effects in instanton models

Nonperturbative nolocal structure of QCD vacuum is well described by instanton model. Specific helicity and flavor structure of zero modes of quarks, in instanton field allows simultaneously to explain some important features of low-and high-energy hadron phenomemology. The basic characteristics of hadron spectrum, partonic sum rules, heavyquark potential etc within the instanton liquid model are briefly discussed.     

Forecasting call frequency at a financial services call centre

A forecasting model is developed for the number of daily applications for loans at a financial services telephone call centre. The purpose of the forecasts and the associated prediction intervals is to provide effective staffing policies within the call centre. The model building process is constrained by the availability of only 2 years and 7 months of data. The distinctive feature of the data is that demand is driven in the main by advertising. The analysis given focuses on applications stimulated by press advertising. Unlike previous analyses of broadly similar data, where ARIMA models were used, a model with a dynamic level, multiplicative calendar effects and a multiplicative advertising response is developed and shown to be effective.     

Recursive partition and amalgamation with the exponential family: Theory and applications

The theory of tree-growing (RECPAM approach) is developed for outcome variables which are distributed as the canonical exponential family. The general RECPAM approach (consisting of three steps: recursive partition, pruning and amalgamation), is reviewed. This is seen as constructing a partition with maximal information content about a parameter to be predicted, followed by simplification by the elimination of ‘negligible’ information. The measure of information is defined for an exponential family outcome as a deviance difference, and appropriate modifications of pruning and amalgamation rules are discussed. It is further shown how the proposed approach makes it possible to develop tree-growing for situations usually treated by generalized linear models (GLIM). In particular, Poisson and logistic regression can be tree-structured. Moreover, censored survival data can be treated, as in GLIM, by observing a formal equivalence of the likelihood under random censoring and an appropriate Poisson model. Three examples are given of application to Poisson, binary and censored survival data.     

Issues in Managing Information Technology

This paper describes three case studies which investigated issues relating to the implementation and management of advanced information technology. The benefits derived from information technology were found to vary from one organization to another. These studies provide further evidence to support earlier research findings that senior management has an important role to play in the effective exploitation of information technology, and that the investment approach taken by an organization has a significant effect on the development of computer-based information systems. The effectiveness of a system depends not only on applying the appropriate technology, but also on how successfully technical and behavioural issues are resolved.     

A New Distribution Function for Risk Analysis

This paper presents an alternative to the beta continuous probability distribution for risk analysis. Particular attention has been given to two major applications of distributions, namely project management risk and critical path analysis (PERT). In conjunction with the beta, the triangular and normal distributions are frequently employed in order to give sufficient robustness to risk analysis. The beta distribution, as used in PERT, has a major theoretical implementation flaw. The new distribution was developed to give a possible alternative method of assessing risk. It is shown that the requirement to estimate the most pessimistic variate may be replaced by the probability to exceed the mode. Proposals for other simplifications in risk analysis are discussed. Practical means to validate the most appropriate distributions for risk analysis are outlined, and a cost-data case study is included.