Practical Management Science

This text takes an active-learning approach, providing numerous examples and problems so students can practice extensively with a concept before moving on. Four types of problems -- skill-building, skill-extending, modeling, and cases are graded within sections and chapters to help instructors assign homework. Another important feature is the way that the text integrates modeling into all functional areas of business: finance, marketing, operations management using real examples and real data. The text emphasizes modeling over algebraic formulations and memorization of particular models. Shell files are also provided so that instructors can give students as much or as little information as they need.

Wayne L. Winston is Professor Emeritus of Decision Sciences at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University and is now a Professor of Decision and Information Sciences at the Bauer College at the University of Houston. He has won more than 45 teaching awards, including the school-wide MBA award six times. His current interest is in showing how spreadsheet models can be used to solve business problems in all disciplines, particularly in finance, sports, and marketing. In addition to publishing more than 20 articles in leading journals, Dr. Winston has written such successful textbooks as OPERATIONS RESEARCH: APPLICATIONS AND ALGORITHMS, MATHEMATICAL PROGRAMMING: APPLICATIONS AND ALGORITHMS, SIMULATION MODELING WITH @RISK, DATA ANALYSIS FOR MANAGERS, SPREADSHEET MODELING AND APPLICATIONS, MATHLETICS, DATA ANALYSIS AND BUSINESS MODELING WITH EXCEL 2013, MARKETING ANALYTICS, and FINANCIAL MODELS USING SIMULATION AND OPTIMIZATION. He received his B.S. degree in mathematics from MIT and his Ph.D. in operations research from Yale.

S. Christian Albright received his B.S. degree in mathematics from Stanford in 1968 and his Ph.D. in operations research from Stanford in 1972. Since then, he has been teaching in the Operations and Decision Technologies Department in the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. He has taught courses in management science, computer simulation, and statistics to all levels of business students: undergraduates, MBAs, and doctoral students. His current interest is in spreadsheet modeling, including development of VBA applications in Excel. Dr. Albright has published more than 20 articles in leading operations research journals in the area of applied probability. He has also published a number of successful textbooks, including DATA ANALYSIS AND DECISION MAKING, DATA ANALYSIS FOR MANAGERS, and SPREADSHEET MODELING AND APPLICATIONS.