Info-Gap Decision Theory | Voodoo Decision-Making | Robust Decisions | Severe Uncertainty | Satisficing vs Optimizing | Maximin


WORMS

This is an old project. It started in 1995 when I observed that large national OR/MS societies were very slow in exploiting the WWW for the delivery of new services to members.

The idea was to put useful information on the WWW for the benefit of the international OR/MS community. The reaction was fantastic.

In contrast to other such sites at the time, my intention was to provide not only static information typically consisting of links to other site where some useful text/graphics files could be found, but also dynamic material, that is material that the user can interact with. This lead to a number of projects that later on were consolidated into the tutOR project.

Today the WORMS web site is essentially a static creature with pointers to other - active - sites that were originally created as WORMS projects.

For obvious reasons, over the years the site attracted numerous visitors looking for information about real worms. The following is a small sample of typical queries of this type:


Delivered-To: moshe@ms.unimelb.edu.au
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 11:41:09 +1000
From: ???? Public School ?????????
Subject: WORMS
To: m.sniedovich@ms.unimelb.edu.au
X-Accept-Language: en
Status: RO

DEAR WORM FARMERS,

I ???? WHICH IS TYPING AND ????  WHO IS HELPING ME , WE WOULD
LIKE  TO LEARN A BIT MORE ABOUT WORMS.  THIS IS WHAT WE
WANT TO KNOW,WHERE THEY LIVE,WHAT THEY EAT,WHAT THEIR
PRAEDITERS ARE, ALL THE KINDS OF WORMS THERE ARE.


Delivered-To: moshe@ms.unimelb.edu.au
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 12:26:35 -0400
From: ????????
Subject: Worms
To: m.sniedovich@ms.unimelb.edu.au
Importance: Normal
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)

A three year old would like to know "how come worms have no bones?"

?????

<mailto:???????>???????

Delivered-To: moshe@ms.unimelb.edu.au
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 01:04:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: ???????
Subject: worms
To: m.sniedovich@ms.unimelb.edu.au
Status: RO
X-Status: 
X-Keywords:                 
X-UID: 9897

hi!  im writing to because i found worms in my back yard.
they are about 1and a half inch long white in color and they tried to bite me. i dont know what they are.
they only come out when it rains.are these earthworms. i have never seen them before.

could you email me to let me know.

email address is ??????? thank you

Delivered-To: moshe@ms.unimelb.edu.au
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 13:23:24 +1000
From: ??????????
Subject: How do worms reproduce?
Status: RO

To Whom It May Concern:

I know this is probably a weird question but a co-worker and I
started discussing worms and she said she saw a pregnant
earthworm and when she was asked how did she know it was
pregnant, she stated that it had a hump on it.  I don't mean to be 
ignorant but is it possible?  Then the question came, how do worms
reproduce?

Good Question Huh???

Can you answer it?
Write back soon
????????

In any case, I plan to keep the web site alive indefinitely. If you have any interesting OR/MS jokes/anecdotes I shall be happy to add them to the collection I still maintain on WORMS.


Disclaimer: This page, its contents and style, are the responsibility of the author (Moshe Sniedovich) and do not represent the views, policies or opinions of The University of Melbourne.