A collaborative filtering system recommends to users products that similar users like. Collaborative filtering systems influence purchase decisions and hence have become targets of manipulation by unscrupulous vendors. We demonstrate that nearest neighbors algorithms, which are widely used in...

The exact distribution of visiting rates does not appear to be widely known in the marketing literature. Here, analytical expressions are derived for the exact distribution, and their performance is compared with some known approximation. Some computer programs are provided for practical use.

This paper illustrates a methodology to evaluate how dissimilar military systems support the accomplishment of the United States' counterproliferation objectives. The key questions in evaluating counterproliferation systems are identified. By using decision analysis, an influence diagram model...

Many companies have embarked on initiatives that enable more demand information sharing between retailers and their upstream suppliers. While the literature on such initiatives in the business press is proliferating, it is not clear how one can quantify the benefits of these initiatives and how...

Expanding product variety and high customer service provision are both major challenges for manufacturers to compete in the global market. In addition to many ongoing programs, such as lead-time reduction, redesigning products and processes so as to delay the point of product differentiation is...

The problem addressed is that of a condensed steady-state solution for the Markov Chain (X(t), S(t)). The steady state marginal distribution of S(t) is known; we desire only the steady state marginal distribution of X(t). Such a case frequently arises when the supplementary random variable S(t)...

Call center managers are facing increasing pressure to reduce costs while maintaining acceptable service quality. Consequently, they often face constrained stochastic optimization problems, minimizing cost subject to service-level constraints. Complicating this problem is the fact that...

There are many situations where one is interested in predicting the expected number of events in period 2 given that x events occurred in period 1. For example, insurance companies must decide whether or not to cancel the insurance of drivers who had 3 or more accidents during the previous year....

We consider the problem of integrating inventory control and vehicle routing into a cost-effective strategy for a distribution system consisting of a single outside vendor, a fixed number of warehouses and many geographically dispersed retailers. Each retailer faces a constant, retailer...