Operations Research for Physics Majors: Is it Worth It?

[kuahji]

Just out of curiosity, would a class in operations research be worth the time for someone majoring in physics, hoping to go to graduate school for theoretical physics/cosmology?

 

[Dr Lots-o'watts]

I don't see how.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research

If you are interested, by all means take the class, a plan B is always welcome, but you shouldn't have to go there to learn the math you need in theoretical physics.

Of course, it can depend on what type of work you want to do once you graduate.

 

[cgk]

Operations research is concerned with all kinds of discrete optimization problems. Having a basic knowledge in this field is generally a useful skill to have if you will be developing software for quantitative purposes (say, calculating models, data analysis, etc). You'd be surprised at how often network optimization and routing problems occur.

 

[AlephZero]

It depends what sort of course it is. The "project management" side of OR probably won't teach you anything relevant, and might not challenge you intellectually either. The more mathematical side (queuing theory, etc) might teach you some useful probability and statistics, but if you want to learn statistics, then why not do a statistics course instead?

 

[ych22]

It depends what sort of course it is. The "project management" side of OR probably won't teach you anything relevant, and might not challenge you intellectually either. The more mathematical side (queuing theory, etc) might teach you some useful probability and statistics, but if you want to learn statistics, then why not do a statistics course instead?

What you imply about the rigor and theoretical relevance of a general OR course is true, especially for a physics major.

However, the OR course can still be considered because it should be interesting and very relevant to "real-life" problems. If you want to see how applied maths and stochastics are used to model and solve problems, then do take the course.

 

[kuahji]

I don't see how.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research

If you are interested, by all means take the class, a plan B is always welcome, but you shouldn't have to go there to learn the math you need in theoretical physics.

Of course, it can depend on what type of work you want to do once you graduate.

Thanks all for the responses.

I agree at first it didn't look all that interesting, but the class description states "After a brief historical introduction, presents a detailed study of mathematics related to linear programming. The theory includes the simplex method, duality theory, sensitivity analysis, and matrix games."

I already have a solid background in statistics and looking up each individual area listed seemed like it "may" be useful at some point.

 

[Dr Lots-o'watts]

I have no doubt it is useful, and it can surely be interesting. But in relation to physics, I suspect it is more useful for managing (many) physicists or perhaps experiments involving very many parameters, than for understanding natural phenomena directly ("physics" itself). It seems like a rather indirect way of learning the math required to understand conventional and current theories. I'd go for core physics first, and then this stuff later on, as needed.