AmazonFresh 的優點

旅行推銷員問題 (Traveling Salesman Problem, TSP) 的應用 

在我的作業研究課程中，說明複雜的整數規劃問題 TSP，目標是以最短距離，經過每一站一次。如果有 100 站需要送貨，第一站的選擇有 100 種，第二站的選擇有 99 種，依此類推；因為來回重覆計算，所以總共的選擇有 100 * 99 * ... * 1 / 2，等於 100! / 2。因為複雜，所以使用基因演算法 (Genetic Algorithm) 求得近似解。 

Amazon 推出的 AmazonFresh 服務，讓消費者可以在線上購物，由 Amazon 統一送貨 (右圖，TSP 的問題)，較消費者自行購物 (左圖) 省油。不過，台灣的購物者通常距離賣場較近，而且不少人騎較省油的摩托車購物，所以其效果待評估。圖片資訊來源。

可以參見 Jan Van Mieghem 教授的評論。 

成為殺手級演說家

TED 的論壇主席 (curator) Chris Anderson ˙『分享打造一場絕佳演講的五大關鍵：設計故事架構、規畫表達方式、發展穩健的台風、準備多媒體輔助工具、將一切整合起來。另外，他也提出「毀掉」一場演講的十大錯誤。』 (註 1) 

文章中提及的著名演講，可以線上聽以學習好榜樣，例如 Richard Turere、Bill Gates、Sir Ken Robinson、Jill Bolte Taylor、Amy Cuddy、Susan Cain、Ross Lovegrove、Reuben Margolin、Chris Anderson 等等。 

十大錯誤值得參考，第一點的 『花太長的時間，去解釋你的演講主題』就常常看到。 

(註 1) 原文 Chris Anderson, How to Give a Killer Presentation, Harvard Business Review, Jun 2013.

惠普 (HP) 的人力資源管理：混合整數規劃 (MIP) 的應用

先前的 blog 是分析海量資料找到新員工；但是，惠普則是考慮應用目前組織內的人力 (註 1)，在人員、需求、時間的限制下，以最少的成本完成各項計劃，是一個混合整數規劃的問題。

(註 1) Cipriano Santos, Tere Gonzalez, Haitao Li, Kay-Yut Chen, Dirk Beyer, Sundaresh Biligi, Qi Feng, Ravindra Kumar, Shelen Jain, Ranga Ramanujam, and Alex Zhang, HP Enterprise Services Uses Optimization for Resource Planning, Interfaces, March/April 2013, 43:152-169. 

海量資料在人力資源管理的應用：一些公司的例子

根據紐約時報的報導 (註 1)，當 Gild 的首席科學家 (chief scientist) Vivienne Ming 由男生變性成女生後，發現性別和種族會影響一個人的判斷和行為 

As a woman, Dr. Ming started noticing that people treated her differently. There were small things that seemed innocuous, like men opening the door for her.  

There were also troubling things, like the fact that her students asked her fewer questions about math then they had when she was a man, or that she was invited to fewer social events — a baseball game, for instance — by male colleagues and business connections. 

Bias often takes forms that people may not recognize. One study that Dr. Ming cites, by researchers at Yale, found that faculty members at research universities described female applicants for a manager position as significantly less competent than male applicants with identical qualifications. Another study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that people who sent in résumés with “black-sounding” names had a considerably harder time getting called back from employers than did people who sent in résumés showing equal qualifications but with “white-sounding” names. 

Everybody can pretty much agree that gender, or how people look, or the sound of a last name, shouldn’t influence hiring decisions. But Dr. Ming takes the idea of meritocracy further. She suggests that shortcuts accepted as a good proxy for talent — like where you went to school or previously worked — can also shortchange talented people and, ultimately, employers. “The traditional markers people use for hiring can be wrong, profoundly wrong,” she said.