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

Lectures and Presentations

Over the years I have attempted to attend at least one "overseas" conference per year. I hope to be able to continue this long established tradition.

I have considerable experience in organizing conference tutorials and workshops. I shall be delighted to consider organizing a tutorial/workshop for your conference!

In particular, I can offer you a very entertaining and thought provoking tutorial and/or plenary lecture on a number of topics, including sequential decision making and decision-making under severe uncertainty.

  1. International Symposium on Extremal Methods and Systems Analysis, September 13-15, 1977, Austin, Texas. Presentation: A new look at dynamic programming.
  2. Joint National TIMS/ORSA Meeting, May 1-3, 1978, New York. Presentation: Monotonicity-free dynamic programming.
  3. International Symposium on Risk and Reliability in Water Resources, June 26-28, 1978, Waterloo, Canada. Presentation: On the reliability of reliability constraints.
  4. ORSA/TIMS Joint National Meeting, November 13-15, 1978, Los Angeles. Presentation: Chance-constrained dynamic programming.
  5. Second International Conference on Mathematical Modelling, (International Association for Mathematical Modelling), St. Louis, Missouri, July 11-13, 1979. Presentation: Dynamic Programming: an interactive approach (with J.S. Smart).
  6. ORSA/TIMS Joint National Meeting, October 15-17, 1979, Milwaukee. Presentation: Use and abuse of preference order dynamic programming: three counter examples.
  7. IFIP Working Conference on Environmental Systems Analysis and Management, September 28-30, 1981, Rome, Italy. Presentation: The role of optimization in water resources management.
  8. ORSA/TIMS Joint National Meeting, October 11-14 1981, Houston, Texas. Presentation: An interactive environment for operations research.
  9. APL81 Conference (sponsored by Association for Computing Machinery), October 21-23, 1981, San Francisco. Presentation: Use of APL in Operations Research - An interactive dynamic programming model.
  10. First South African APL Symposium, February 16, 1982, Pretoria, South Africa. Presentation: Direct definition of APL functions.
  11. APL82 Conference (The APL club of Germany in cooperation with the American Association for Computing Machinery), July 26-30, 1982, Heidelberg, Germany.Presentation: Interactive multilevel definition of APL functions.
  12. Annual Conference, Operations Research Society of South Africa, Rustenburg, South Africa, October 28-29, 1982. Presentation: Chance constrained dynamic programming.
  13. South African National Hydrological Symposium, September 8-9, 1983. Two presentations: (1) Analysis of reservoir control capacity expansion problems; (2) Yield-risk models for reservoir control problems (with H. Beernaert).
  14. ORSA/TIMS Joint National Meeting, November 7-9, 1983, San Francisco. Presentation: Eureka! Bellman's Principle of Optimality is valid!
  15. International Conference on Operations Research in Resources and Requirements in Southern Africa, (Sponsored by the International Federation of Operations Research Societies), Pretoria, South Africa, April 2-5, 1984. Presentation: The role of optimization in water resources management: a perspective.
  16. TIMS XXVI, June 17-21, 1984, Copenhagen, Denmark. Three presentations: (1) What is dynamic programming? (2) Sequential multicriteria optimization methods; (3) Analysis of stochastic reservoir control capacity expansion problems.
  17. 12th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming, (Mathematical Programming Society), August 5-9,1985, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Presentation: C-programming and its applications.
  18. The Second Bellman Continuum, June 24-25, 1986, Atlanta. Invited presentation: C-programming: a nonlinear parametric optimizat-ion method.
  19. Special Workshop on Dynamic Programming and Water Resources (sponsored by the National Science Foundation), June 25-27, 1986, Atlanta. Invited presentation: The use of dynamic programming in solving nonseparable water resources problems.
  20. Annual Conference, Operations Research Society of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa, September10-12,1986. Presentation: C-program-ming and its applications.
  21. Thirteenth South African Symposium on Numerical Mathematics, (South African Society for Numerical Mathematics), July 13-15, 1987, Umhlanga Rocks, South Africa. Invited presentation and a workshop on: Interactive Computing Modelling and Analysis.
  22. Second South African APL Symposium, November 23-24, 1987, Pretoria South Africa. Presentation: Mechanizing APL.
  23. EURO IX/TIMS XXVIII Joint International Conference, July 6-8, 1988, Paris, France. Two presentations: (1) A classical setting for fractional programming; (2) A new look at multicriteria dynamic programming.
  24. First International Workshop on Project Management and Scheduling, (Operations Research Society of Portugal), Lisbon, July 11-13, 1988. Two presentations: (1) Interactive Computing, modelling, and analysis; (2) Solving nonseparable scheduling problems with dynamic programming.
  25. 12th IMACS World Congress, July18-22,1988, Paris, France. Presentation: Interactive scientific computation with mathemat-ical notation.
  26. Annual Conference, Operations Research Society of South Africa, University of Zululand, Zululand, September 28-30, 1988. Presentation: Some comments on multiple criteria dynamic programming.
  27. 10th ASOR National Conference, Australian Operations Research Society, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia, July 9-11, 1990. Presentation: C-programming and its Applications.
  28. EURO XI Congress, The Association of European Operational Research Societies, RWTH Aachen, Aachen, July 16-19, 1991. Two presentations: Solving Nonsepar-able Dynamic Programming Problems with Multiobjective Techniques, (with Sue Findlay); Composite Concave Programming and its Applications. Software Demonstration: Parallel Computing on Personal Computers in OR/MS.
  29. EURO XII/TIMS XXXI Conference, The Association of European Operational Research Societies and The Institute for Management Science, Helsinki, Finland, June 29 - July 1, 1992. Three presentations: To MCDM or not to MCDM - A Water Reseources System Perspective; Newton's First Order Method and Its Role in Global Optimization, (with Sue Findlay); Pseudo Parallel Computing Via Nested Arrays.
  30. APL92, Russian APL Society, St. Petersburg, Russia, July 5-10, 1992. Presentation: Jogging with APL Along the Shortest Path, (with Sue Findlay).
  31. IFORS93, IFORS, Lisbon, Portugal, July 12-16, 1993. Presentation (Australia's National Contribution): Algorithmic and Computational Aspects of Composite Concave Programming.
  32. Sixth International Workshop on Computer Aided Scheduling of Public Transport, EURO, IFORS, Lisbon, Portugal, July 6-9, 1993. Presentation (with E. Macalalag:) Solving Scheduling Problems with Concave Objective Functions.
  33. CLAIO94, Santiago, Chile, July 4-9, 1994. Two presentations: (1) An Introduction to Composite Concave Programming and Its Applications; (2) Composite Linear Programming and Its Applications.
  34. APL in Business, British APL Society, Swansea, Wales, July 18-22, 1994. Presentation: Urgently Needed: An Array Oriented Modelling Language for Linear Programming! Can APL Do It?
  35. INFORMS 95, Institute for Operations Research and management Sciences, Singapore, June 25-28, 1995. Five presentations: (1) An Introduction to Composite Concave Programming and Its Applications (invited tutorial) (2) Fractional Programming: A Mathematical Curiousity OR A Pearl in Disguise? (3) Constraint Satisfaction Problems: An Operational Research Perspective (with Gavin Cole) (4) Controlling Inventory Shortages Via Reliability Constraints (with Susanne Irvine) (5) Towards A Common Schema for Dynamic Programming and Branch and Bound (with Emannuel Macalalag).
  36. EURO XIV Conference, The Association of European Operational Research Societies, Jerusalem, Israel, July 3-6, 1995. Two presentations: (1) Composite Concave Programming and Its Applications (2) Solving a Dynamic Programming Functional Equation Containing a Lagrange Multiplier (with Susanne Irvine).
  37. Optimization 95, Operations Research Society of Portugal, Braga, Portugal, July 16-19, 1995. Presentation: An Introduction to Composite Concave Programming and Its Applications.
  38. 13th ASOR Conference, Australian Society for Operations Research, Canberra, Sept 25-27, 1995. Four presentations: (1) An Information Super-Highway or an Unpaved Toll Road: What is there for OR on the Web? (2) An Operational Research Perspective on Constraint Programming (with Gavin Cole and Emmanuel Macalalag) (3) Making Lagrangian Dynamic Programming More Friendly to the Dynamic Programming Algorithm (with Susanne Irvine) (4) Composite Concave Integer Programming (with Leonid Churilov).
  39. APDSI 96, 1st Asia Pacific DSI Conference, Decision Science Institute, Hong Kong, June 21-22, 1996. Presentation: On the Notion of Hyper-Sensitivity Analysis in Decision Making (with L Churilov, and Angelina Byrne).
  40. IFORS96, International Federation of Operational Research Societies, Vancouver Canada, July 8-13, 1996. (1) Two presentations: (1) On the Relationship between Dynamic Programming and Branch and Bound (with E. Macalalag) (2) Toward Sensitivity Analysis in Dynamic Programming (with S. Irvine). Pannelist: Session on "OR on the Web".
  41. EURO/IFORS Conference, Barcelona, Spain, July 14-17, 1997. Two presentations: (1) On the Notion of Hypersensitivity Analysis and Its Applications (With Byrne and Churilov) (2) Developing OR/MS Teaching Material on the WWW.
  42. APORS 97, Association of Asia Pacific OR Societies, Mellbourne, Nove 30 - Dec 4, 1997. (1) Tutorial: Introduction to Composite Concave Programming and its Applications (2) A Constrint Programming Paradigm for Operations Research (with Gavin Cole and Emmanuel Macalalag) (3) Towards Sensitivity Analysis of Sequential Decision Processes (with Susanne Irvine) (4) Hyper Sensitivity Analysis and its Application to Soft Constraints and Portfolio Optimization Problems (with Leonid Churilov and Angie Byrne).
  43. INFORMS, Tel Aviv, Israel, June 29 - July 1, 1998. Tutorial: What can the WWW do for you? Panel Discussion: The OR/WWW Interface. Presentations: Optimization via composite linearization (2) On the Notion of the best 'mean-variance' portfolio (with Churilov).
  44. EURO XVI: EURO, Bruxelles, Belgium, July 20-22, 1998. Plenary lecture: On the OR/WWW Interface. Presentations: (1) Towards meta modelling and computing in OR (2) Hyper Sensitivity Analysis of Portfolio Optimization Problems" (with Churilov and Bomze) .
  45. OPTIMIZATION 98, Operations Research Society of Portugal, Coimbra, Portugal, July 20-22, 1998. Presentation: Hyper-sensitivity analysis via composite concave programming.
  46. APL 98, Italian APL Society, Rome, Italy, August 25-28, 1998. Tutorial: A very gentle introduction to JavaScript for APLers. Panel Discussion: the future of APL.
  47. ASOR 99, ASOR, Gold Coast, Australia, July 5-7, 1999. Presentation: Doing it forward, backward and on trees with dynamic programming (with Gavin Cole).
  48. AMS 99: Australian Mathematical Society, Melbourne, Australia, July 12-16, 1999. Presentation: Backward or forward ? (DP-wise).
  49. IFORS 99: IFORS, Beijing, China, August 16-20, 1999. Presentation: The future of OR modelling languages: back to basics.
  50. 6th International Symposium on Generalised Convexity and Monotonicity, WGGC, Samos, Greece, August 30 - September 3 1999. Presentation: Hyper-sensitivity analysis via composite concave programming.
  51. OR41 Conference, ORS, Edinburgh, UK, September 14-16, 1999. Presentations: (1) Backward of Forward ? (with Gavin Cole) (2) Good news and Bad news from the OR/WWW interface.
  52. DITAM 99, MEU, Melbourne, November 18, 1999. Presentation: Keep it simple mate! How to build low budget, educationally rich on line tutorial systems (with Angie Byrne).
  53. 2nd International Workshop, ORSJ (Hokkaido) and ASOR (Queensland), Sapporo, Japan, June 26-28, 2000. Presentation: IFORS tutORial Project.
  54. APORS 2000, Singapore, July 5-7, 2000. Presentations: (1) Invited plenary lecture: IFORS tutORial Project, (2) Composite Linearization in Global Optimization (3) Hyper-sensitivity Analysis of Productivity and Efficiency Measurement Problems (with Leonid Churilov)
  55. EURO XVII, Budapest, Hungary, July 16-19, 2000. Invited Semi-plenary tutorial: IFORS tutORial Project.
  56. IFORS International Meeting, Maui, Hawaii, June 16-20, 2001. Invited tutorial: IFORS tutORial Project.
  57. EURO XVIII, Rotterdam, Netherlands, July 9-11, 2001. Invited semi-plenary tutorial: IFORS tutORial project.
  58. MIC 2001, Porto, Portugal, July 16-20, 2001. Plenary presentation: IFORS tutORial Project.
  59. APORS 2001, Adelaide, Australia, September 24-27, 2001. Presentation: the tutOR Project (with Angie Byrne).
  60. ICMT 2, Crete, Greece, July 1-6, 2002. One presentation.
  61. EURO XIV, Istanbul, Turkey, July 6-10m 2003. Presentation: Recreational DP.
  62. CE2003, Madeira, Portugal, July 26-30, 2003. Presentations: (1) The Role of games and puzzles in OR/MS education (2) On line educationally rich modules: an overview the IFORS tutORial project.
  63. ASOR Recent Advances 2003, Melbourne, Australia, November 12, 2003. Presentation: Writing your own DP computer codes: a practitioner oriented guide.
  64. EUROPT Continuous Optimization Workshop, July 2004. Invited presentation: Recreational Optimization: opportunities and challenges.
  65. EURO XV Conference, Rhodes, Greece, July 4-7, 2004. Presentation: Dijkstra's Algorithm Revisited: A Dynamic Programming Perspective.
  66. IFORS OR Teachers Workshop, Manila, Philippines, July 19-21, 2004. Invited presentations: (i) IFORS tutORial Project (ii) Role of Games and Puzzles in OR/MS Education (iii) Issues in Teaching CPM and Dijkstra's Algorithm.
  67. IFORS 2005, Hawaii. July 11-15, 2005. Presentation: The role of games/puzzles in OR/MS education.
  68. OR05, Bremen, Germany, September 7-9, 2005. Presentation: Recreational Optimization: A serious look at Games and Puzzles.
  69. MME05, Czech Republic, September 13-14, 2005. Plenary Lecture on the IFORS tutORial project.
  70. INFORMS, Hong Kong, July 2006. Presentation: The Missing 10 lines of code in your beloved LP solver.
  71. EURO, Iceland, July 2006. Tutorial: Dynamic Programming for Dummies. Presentation: Myth and Facts about Dynamic Programming. Panel: Role of Math in OR/MS Education.
  72. ASOR Recent Advances, December 1, 2006. Presentation: What is wrong with Info-Gap? an operational research perspective.
  73. INFORMS Meeting, Puerto Rico, July 5-8, 2007. Tutorial: Dynamic Programming Revisited; invited paper: More Math, Please!
  74. ASOR National Conference, Melbourne, December 3-5, 2007. Presentation: Decision-Making Under Severe Uncertainty: An Australian, operational research perspective.
  75. OR 08, ADFA, Canberra, July 7-8, 2008. Invited lecture: Responsible Decision Making in the Face of Severe Uncertainty.
  76. AIRO 2008, Ischia, Italy, September 8-11, 2008. Presentation: The art and science of robust decision-making.
  77. ESREL/SRA 2008, Valencia, Spain, September 22-25, 2008. Presentation: A critique of Info-Gap's Robustness Model.
  78. ASOR Recent Advances, Deakin University, November 26, 2008. Presentation: The Rise and Rise of Voodoo Decision Theory.
  79. SOR'09, Nova Gorica, Slovenia, September 23-25, 2009. Plenary lecture: Modeling of robustness against severe uncertainty.
  80. KORDS'09, Vilnius, Lithuania, September 30 -- October 3, 2009. Presentation: Decision-Making in the Face of Severe Uncertainty.
  81. ASOR Recent Advances in OR, Melbourne, November 15, 2009. Presentation: A Critique of Info-Gap Decision Theory: from Voodoo Decision-Making to Voodoo Economics.
  82. ALIO/INFORMS Conference, Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 6 -- 9, 2010. Invited tutorial: Black swans, new Nostradamuses, voodoo decision theories and the science of decision-making under severe uncertainty.
  83. IFORS 2011, Melbourne, Australia, July 10 -- 15, 2011. Presentation: Fooled by robustness: a perspective from the Land of the Black Swan.
  84. AIRO 2011, Brescia, Italy, September 6 -- 9, 2011. Presentation: Fooled by robustness: the role of local and global robustness in risk analysis.
  85. Alex Rubinov Memorial Lecture, November 7, 2011, The University of Ballarat: The Art, Science, and Joy of (mathematical) Decision-Making (PDF file is available).
  86. ASOR Recent Advances, 2011, Melbourne, Australia, November 16,2011. Presentation: On the Power of the (peer-reviewed) Word.
  87. IFORS 2011, Melbourne, Australia. Presentation: Fooled by Robustness: a Perspective from the Land of the Black Swan.
  88. ASOR Recent Advances, 2012, Melbourne, Australia, November 21, 2012. Presentation: Risk analysis alchemy: generating probability of success by non-probabilistic decision models .
  89. ASOR Recent Advances, 2013, Melbourne, Australia, July 17, 2013. Presentation: From Lax Rhetoric to Irresponsible Decision-Making.
  90. BALCOR 2013 Conference, Belgrade, Serbia, September 7-9, 2013. Invited presentation: The Many Faces of Robust Decision-Making Under Severe Uncertainty.
  91. ASOR Recent Advances, 2015, Melbourne, Australia, February 9-10, 2015. Presentation: The End of a Hidden OR Affair (2013-2014).
  92. ASOR Recent Advances, 2016, Melbourne, Australia, March 31-April, 1, 2016. Presentation: On the intuitive appeal of the concept Radius of Stability.
  93. AMSI OPTIMISE 2018, Melbourne, Australia, June 18-22, 2018. Presentation: Decision-making under severe uncertainty: from worst-case analysis to robust optimization.

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