News Room

The INFORMS Analytics Body of Knowledge (ABOK), released earlier this year at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Phoenix, AZ, has been named second on the list of “22 Best New Analytics Books to Read in 2019” by BookAuthority, which identifies and rates the best books in the world, based on public mentions, recommendations, ratings and sentiment.

According to a new study in the INFORMS journal Management Science, companies choosing to engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) have higher profit margins and valuation, but lower risk. These benefits are amplified when the corporation already has high product differentiation, but at the same time, high CSR helps boost product differentiation. Companies with high CSR also have more stable returns on their assets.

As more enterprise firms and their customers start to question the use of data in analytics, research and artificial intelligence tools, INFORMS is offering an 18-point set of guidelines to ensure ethics in quantitative decision-making.

While problems with flu vaccine distribution in the United States may cost lives and pose a serious threat in the event of a flu pandemic, a new computer model shows that proposed changes to the current distribution system could save thousands of lives. INFORMS members Pinar Keskinocak of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Julie Swann of North Carolina State University, and Zihao Li, a PhD student of Georgia Tech at the time who is currently working at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted research that found by replenishing flu vaccine stocks in regions where they are being used up and not replenishing them in areas where vaccines are piling up because people aren't getting flu shots would have a population-wide benefit by increasing the total number of vaccinated people. They would then be less likely to get sick and to infect others, reducing the overall flu wave. This change to flu vaccine distribution could save thousands of lives in a regular flu season, and even more in a flu pandemic.