Something Strange Happens When You Flatten the Earth… YouTube video by Be Smart

A nice video on the Mercator map projection from @drjoehanson.bsky.social and @pbs.org Be Smart youtu.be/p-9wxYdJing?...

TIL that gerrymandering is part of the Orban story

For all the LP and MIP enthusiasts out there #orms

. @anncampbelliowa.bsky.social has apparently taken over Thiago’s account 😅

…and the final update(?) bsky.app/profile/rick...

Current mood

To all the linear programming enthusiasts out there, how are you gearing up for dual variables day? #orms

“An electric lizard killed my process” is the new “my dog ate my homework”

Also RIP to the 3-day computational experiments I had been running when Lizard caused my PC to reboot

Not the Onion. RIP Lizard www.news9.com/oklahoma-cit...

Okay, who’s gonna MIP it first? And make a web interface? #orms

The 6th EUROYoung Workshop - Lugano 2026 This is the site made for showing activities and opportunities for early career researchers in operations research.

📢 Abstract submission for the EUROYoung Workshop 2026 in Lugano (CH) opens soon!

📅 Workshop: 14–16 October 2026
📝 Abstracts: 10 March – 15 April 2026

Join young researchers in OR for talks, networking & social events.

💻 euroyoung.eu/lugano2026
📧 euroyoung2026@usi-supsi.ch

@euroyoung.bsky.social

And the vibe coding tool for mathematical optimization would be A Math Programmer’s Lollipop, or AMPL for short

APL = Alan Perlis Lollipop. Ok I’ll stop

Or maybe “A Programmer’s Lollipop”. APL for short

If I were creating a GenAI tool for vibe coding, I’d call it ALollipop

Breaking: Supreme Court Reverses Lower Court Order That Redrew Congressional Map in Staten Island, with Ominous Implications for Voting Rights Act #ELB I’m on the road so this will be brief. The Supreme Court over the dissent of the three liberal Justices reversed a lower court order requiring the drawing of a minority opportunity district that the l...

Breaking: Supreme Court Reverses Lower Court Order That Redrew Congressional Map in Staten Island, with Ominous Implications for Voting Rights Act electionlawblog.org?p=154596

bsky.app/profile/stev...

And another… bsky.app/profile/stev...

In 2019 I created a Story Map explainer of NC's distinctive county grouping requirement for legislative redistricting. Soon that resource will vanish (Esri is retiring that old platform). If you want a refresher on the so-called "Stephenson" process, now's the time! #NCPol
1/3
arcg.is/1DnDO

In 2020, Stephenson did quite well in terms of minimizing splits. The state house map is optimal, and the state senate map is suboptimal by only two splits. pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1... But the method can fail spectacularly if the populations are chosen just so… if I ever write that up…

Essentially, a heuristic method to minimize county splitting, as proposed by NC courts

Combinatorial-Optimization-in-Gurobi/connected-dominating-set.ipynb at main · AustinLBuchanan/Combinatorial-Optimization-in-Gurobi Combinatorial Optimization in Gurobi. Contribute to AustinLBuchanan/Combinatorial-Optimization-in-Gurobi development by creating an account on GitHub.

The CDS formulation is especially neat. One type of constraint, but exponentially many of them:

\sum_{ i in C } x_i >= 1 for every vertex cut C in the graph

github.com/AustinLBucha...

GitHub - AustinLBuchanan/Combinatorial-Optimization-in-Gurobi: Combinatorial Optimization in Gurobi Combinatorial Optimization in Gurobi. Contribute to AustinLBuchanan/Combinatorial-Optimization-in-Gurobi development by creating an account on GitHub.

Several of these are implemented here (e.g., k-club, TSP, CDS) github.com/AustinLBucha...

I have had more success with lazy cuts over user cuts, particularly for problems with connectivity constraints (e.g., TSP, connected dominating set, districting). But you can’t quite compare “cuts” versus “no cuts” because the “no cuts” model is incomplete. But you can compare against flow models

Question for #orms people: do you know any problem-specific cutting planes that are not too hard to explain and separate and would improve performance compared to a baseline MIP solver (e.g. SCIP, Gurobi)? Asking because its more fun for students if they implement something and it helps performance

There’s a new paper on arXiv saying the matching polytope has extension complexity O*( 1.5^n ), beating the Edmonds bound O( 2^n ).

Stitt executive order addresses Oklahoma university degree programs, tenures Gov. Kevin Stitt signed two executive orders Thursday that call for reforms at Oklahoma institutions of higher education.

Also this local news article www.kgou.org/education/20...

You are correct. Here’s a statement from our Provost slatehr.okstate.edu/go?cmd=messa...

Usually 1, but sometimes 2. The trouble is things like { x | |x| <= 5 } vs { x : |x| <= 5 }