"Dantzig received his doctorate in 1946, just after World War II, and he soon became a mathematical adviser to the newly formed US Air Force. As with all modern wars, World War II's outcome depended on the prudent allocation of limited resources. But unlike previous wars, this conflict was truly global in scale, and it was won in large part through sheer industrial might."
"Knowing this, the military was intensely interested in optimization problems-that is, how to strategically allocate limited resources in situations that could involve hundreds or thousands of variables. The Air Force tasked Dantzig with figuring out new ways to solve optimization problems such as these. In response, he invented the simplex method, an algorithm that drew on some of the mathematical techniques he had developed while solving his blackboard problems almost a decade before."
George Dantzig, as a first-year graduate student, solved two famous open statistics problems after mistakenly copying them from a blackboard, work that became the basis for his doctoral dissertation. He received his doctorate in 1946 and became a mathematical adviser to the US Air Force. World War II's global scale and industrial output made optimal allocation of limited resources critically important. The Air Force tasked Dantzig with creating new methods to solve large optimization problems. Dantzig invented the simplex method, an algorithm drawing on earlier techniques. The simplex method remains widely used for complex logistical and supply-chain decisions because of its consistent practical speed.
Read at WIRED
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]