In August, Jackson points out, Toyota announced that vehicles customized to buyer specifications would be ready for shipping five days after they're ordered. One, called the Distribution Game, has become something of an obsession with everyone from college freshmen to corporate executives since it was created in 1982. Jackson gets stacks of e-mail about it, many wondering what the highest possible profit is. There's a T-shirt popular among ORIE majors on the Hill. But what they're using are O.R. algorithms.
School districts use the field to figure out the best bus routes.
NASA has hired Cornell researchers to help it plan menus for a future Mars mission, given the limited variety of food that can be grown in space. In one course, professor Robert Bland sets students on the problem of calculating the number of congressmen for each state, a divisive national issue ever since President Washington vetoed Alexander Hamilton's pet method in 1791. Several years ago, the department tackled another logistical nightmare when it did simulations of traffic patterns in the City of Ithaca. Now it's 80 or 90 percent full, and sometimes you even get thrown off. And while many travelers complain about the lack of space, Avramidis stresses that for many people, the alternative is not to fly at all.