Publications

Educators

01 Oct 1999
News

Eight Among Many: Charles W. ("Bill") Cassell

example helped Cassell consider becoming a teacher himself. "It was fascinating to observe how Steve's channeling of the children's excitement about their ideas led students to 'discover' things such as drawing to scale and abstract View Details

Keywords: Eileen McCluskey

01 Mar 2015
News

The Next Big Swing

in 1987, the game puts players in the manager’s seat, letting them make tactical decisions against a mathematical model that determines outcomes based on everything from how a batter has historically fared against a certain pitcher to the... View Details

Keywords: Andrew Clark; Performing Arts, Spectator Sports, and Related Industries; Arts, Entertainment; Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services; Professional Services; Data Processing, Hosting, and Related Services; Information

June 2012
Response

Solution to Exchanges 10.2 Puzzle: Borrowing in the Limit as Our Nerdiness Goes to Infinity

By: Ran I. Shorrer

This is a solution to the editor's puzzle from issue 10.2 of SIGecom Exchanges [Reeves 2011]. The puzzle asks to determine a point in time such that a lump sum payment of $S will be equivalent to a continuous stream of infinitesimal payments totaling $S, spread evenly... View Details

Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Market Transactions; Mathematical Methods

September 2010 (Revised January 2011)
Background Note

Using Regression Analysis to Estimate Time Equations

This note presents a simple way to estimate time equations using regression analysis in Excel. The note quickly outlines regression analysis, then presents a real-life case example from the natural gas industry that students can use to gain experience developing and... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Activity Based Costing and Management; Mathematical Methods

Educators

June 2007
Article

Which Levers Boost ROI?

By: Margeaux Cvar and John A. Quelch

The article refers to ROI, or return on investment, and focuses on a rational strategy for financial markets that uses outside industry comparisons. The first step is to identify parallel businesses that have similar characteristics such as growth, capital, and market... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Financial Markets; Investment Return

2023
Working Paper

PRIMO: Private Regression in Multiple Outcomes

By: Seth Neel

We introduce a new differentially private regression setting we call Private Regression in Multiple Outcomes (PRIMO), inspired the common situation where a data analyst wants to perform a set of l regressions while preserving privacy, where the covariates... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; Mathematical Methods

2023
Article

Which Models Have Perceptually-Aligned Gradients? An Explanation via Off-Manifold Robustness

By: Suraj Srinivas, Sebastian Bordt and Himabindu Lakkaraju

One of the remarkable properties of robust computer vision models is that their input-gradients are often aligned with human perception, referred to in the literature as perceptually-aligned gradients (PAGs). Despite only being trained for classification, PAGs cause... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Mathematical Methods

March 2020
Article

Diagnosing Missing Always at Random in Multivariate Data

By: Iavor I. Bojinov, Natesh S. Pillai and Donald B. Rubin

Models for analyzing multivariate data sets with missing values require strong, often assessable, assumptions. The most common of these is that the mechanism that created the missing data is ignorable—a twofold assumption dependent on the mode of inference. The first... View Details

Keywords: Missing Data; Diagnostic Tools; Sensitivity Analysis; Hypothesis Testing; Missing At Random; Row Exchangeability; Analytics and Data Science; Mathematical Methods

June 2000
Article

On the Regulatory Application of Efficiency Measures

The last decade has witnessed a change to more powerful incentive schemes and the adoption by a large number of regulators of some form of price cap regimes. The efficiency frontiers literature tackles the problem of measuring the X factor in a price cap regime... View Details

Keywords: Performance Productivity; Mathematical Methods; Performance Efficiency

August 2001 (Revised July 2008)
Technical Note

A Technical Note and Discussion on Real Estate Valuation (IBET): Back of the Envelope (BOE) on Bonhomme Place: A Case within a Case

By: Arthur I Segel

Discusses real estate valuation. Reviews "back of the envelope" valuation; real estate appraisal methods, including the income method; market comparables and replacement costs; and more complex computer modeling. Also discusses other variables that could influence... View Details

Keywords: Investment Funds; Mathematical Methods; Valuation; Real Estate Industry

Educators

01 Dec 2017
News

Ink: Alumni Book Recommendations

understanding of human psychology, without the acceptance that we are all crazy, irrational, impulsive, emotionally driven animals, all the raw intelligence and mathematical logic in the world is little help in the fraught, shifting... View Details

2025
Working Paper

Incentive-Compatible Recovery from Manipulated Signals, with Applications to Decentralized Physical Infrastructure

By: Jason Milionis, Jens Ernstberger, Joseph Bonneau, Scott Duke Kominers and Tim Roughgarden

We introduce the first formal model capturing the elicitation of unverifiable information from a party (the "source") with implicit signals derived by other players (the "observers"). Our model is motivated in part by applications in decentralized physical... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Infrastructure; Information Infrastructure

Forthcoming
Article

Slowly Varying Regression Under Sparsity

By: Dimitris Bertsimas, Vassilis Digalakis Jr, Michael Lingzhi Li and Omar Skali Lami

We consider the problem of parameter estimation in slowly varying regression models with sparsity constraints. We formulate the problem as a mixed integer optimization problem and demonstrate that it can be reformulated exactly as a binary convex optimization problem... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Analytics and Data Science

2024
Working Paper

Empirical Guidance: Data Processing and Analysis with Applications in Stata, R, and Python

By: Melissa Ouellet and Michael W. Toffel

This paper describes a range of best practices to compile and analyze datasets, and includes some examples in Stata, R, and Python. It is meant to serve as a reference for those getting started in econometrics, and especially those seeking to conduct data analyses in... View Details

Keywords: Empirical Methods; Empirical Operations; Statistical Methods And Machine Learning; Statistical Interferences; Research Analysts; Analytics and Data Science; Mathematical Methods

SSRN

2021
Working Paper

Impact Investing: A Theory of Financing Social Enterprises

By: Benjamin N. Roth

I present a model of financing social enterprises to delineate the role of impact investors relative to “pure” philanthropists. I characterize the optimal scale and structure of a social enterprise when financed by grants, and when financed by investments. Impact... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Social Entrepreneurship; Finance; Investment; Mathematical Methods

SSRN

Article

Quantile Evaluation, Sensitivity to Bracketing, and Sharing Business Payoffs

By: Y. Grushka-Cockayne, K. C. Lichtendahl, V.R.R. Jose and R.L. Winkler

From forecasting competitions to conditional value-at-risk requirements, the use of multiple quantile assessments is growing in practice. To evaluate them, we use a rule from the general class of proper scoring rules for a forecaster’s multiple quantiles of a single... View Details

Keywords: Forecast; Aggregation; Operations; Forecasting and Prediction; Mathematical Methods

January 2000
Article

Maxmin Expected Utility through Statewise Combinations

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Peter Klibanoff and Emre Ozdenoren

This paper provides an axiomatic foundation for a maxmin expected utility over a set of priors (MMEU) decision rule in an environment where the elements of choice are Savage acts. The key axioms are stated using statewise combinations as in Gul (1992). View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Mathematical Methods

March 2016 (Revised January 2020)
Teaching Note

Behavioural Insights Team (A) and (B)

By: Michael Luca and Patrick Rooney

The Behavioural Insights Team case introduces students to the concept of choice architecture and the value of experimental methods (sometimes called A/B testing) within organizational contexts. The exercise provides an opportunity for students to apply these principles... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Economics; Experiments; Choice Architecture; Public Entrepreneurship; Decision Choices and Conditions; Mathematical Methods; United Kingdom