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Title: Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science Second Edition by Saul I. Gass, Carl M. Harris ISBN: 0-7923-7827-X Publisher: Kluwer Academic Publishers Pub. Date: October, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $532.00

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Encyclopedias Are My Best Friends
Comment: People keep on badgering me about what do I do and how did I earn my living? Well, I am a management scientist. They respond with a blank stare.
Some time ago a curious person asked a management scientist, "What is Management Science?" The expert who was a wit answered, "Management Science is what management scientists do". But an even greater wit, C. West Churchman, overheard this and corrected the statement: "Management Science is what management scientists think they do. Today, there is an unequivocal answer: "Management Science is what is printed in the Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science".
So now when a friend badgers me I show the Encyclopedia, "This is what I and my colleagues do". He weighs the tome, leaves through and typically says "You told me you help management. This is a book on math. How come?" I shrug my shoulders, "As you can see, we find that math is the most effective way to deal with some management issues.
We need to realize that publication of an encyclopedia is a defining moment in our intellectual history. When in 1745 the publisher André Le Breton approached Denis Diderot (1713-1784), French philosopher, who also wrote novels, essays, plays, and art and literary criticism with a view to bringing out a French translation of Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopedia after two other translators had withdrawn from the project. Diderot undertook the task with the distinguished mathematician Jean Le Rond d'Alembert as coeditor but soon profoundly changed the nature of the publication, broadening its scope and turning it into a vast, new 35-volume work, Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des metiers which is usually known as the Encyclopédie . He gathered around him a team of dedicated litterateurs, scientists, and even priests, including Voltaire and Montesquieu. All were fired with a common purpose: to further knowledge by a "rational dictionary" and to bring out the essential principles and applications of every art and science.
Drs. Saul I. Gass and the late Carl M. Harris followed in the footsteps of Diderot and d'Alembert, gathered an international group of the best brains and produced the monumental 917-page tome of the Encyclopedia of OR/MS, with 228 major expository articles to provide decision makers and problem solvers "comprehensive overview of the wide range of ideas, methodologies, and synergistic forces that combine to form the pre-eminent decision-aiding fields of operations research and management science".

Rating: 5
Summary: The Single Reference for Operations Research
Comment: This work provides an excellent reference for OR/MS. It would be difficult to identify a related topic not addressed. The entries are truly encyclopedic in nature, succinctly presenting material supported by key references. Besides broad coverage of major areas of OR useful for researchers venturing into new areas, separate entries provide information on key concepts. This greatly facilitates retrieving in-depth information. For example, decision analysis is covered as a general topic, while a separate entry provides information regarding certainty equivalents.

Of interest to military OR analysts, there are entries for battle modeling, combat model and combat simulation, military operations research, and military operations other than war. Interestingly there are also entries discussing US Air Force and Navy operations research while there does not seem to be one specific to Army OR. The military roots of OR is discussed in these entries, as well as that outlining the history of the Operations Research Office.

If the book has a weakness, it must be the index. While certainly a good effort, there seem to be a number of items in the entries that, had they been included in the index, would have made the book more useful. And while the encyclopedia can't be everything to everyone, I would have included more multivariate statistical topics notwithstanding my second sentence above. The cost of the book places it out of reach for most personal libraries.