Professor Renyu Zhang delves into the analytics and operations research
AI, big data, and machine learning are some of the hottest tech buzzwords today, but few are aware that operations research actually drives these technologies. Operations research is about using data and analytical models to generate insights and guide better decision making.
Renyu Zhang, Assistant Professor of Operations Management at NYU Shanghai, teaches the Business Analytics course, which introduces state-of-art analytics techniques to students. Students use machine learning tools to creative precise predictive models. This hands-on experience will help them grasp analytics techniques that are useful in a wide range of real-world decision-making scenarios for individuals, enterprises, and governments.
Students learn how to create data analytics models for real-world applications
As society advances and the impacts and consequences from a single decision grows ever more complicated, data analytics helps make sense of massive amounts of complex information.
Operations research and analytics exists in all corners of our lives. It has driven the growth of multi-billion dollar companies like the on-demand ride-sharing platform Didi Chuxing. By employing state-of-the-art analytics, the Didi platform responds to patterns in user behavior and matches huge numbers of drivers with riders quickly and fairly.
These techniques also have life-saving applications in medicine. Alvin Roth, the 2012 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, designed kidney exchange programs to enable transplantations between otherwise incompatible donor-patient pairs. His work built on three decades of work from operations researchers and economists working in the field.
“The core of artificial intelligence is to use optimization methods to train a model that would make the ‘smallest’ mistake in a given task,” says Zhang, “without the fast development of operations research and analytics, the coolest achievements of AI such as AlphaGo and autonomous driving would simply be impossible.”
Analytics drive breakthroughs in AI and machine learning like AlphaGo--the first computer to beat a human world champion in the game of Go
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教授观点 // 运筹学——智慧决策的科学
当下最火爆的话题是什么？人工智能、大数据、机器学习……而运筹学则是所有上述领域的基础。这是一门探寻智慧决策的科学，通过将数据转换成洞见和模型，从而优化决策。
上海纽约大学运营管理学助理教授、纽约大学全球特聘助理教授张任宇，专注于运筹学的研究与教学。他开设的商业分析课程教授机器学习、因果推断和最优化等前沿的技术与工具。在这门课上，学生将通过大量实际操作，熟练掌握多种运筹学工具，为个人、企业和政府机构提供数据驱动决策方案，并深入理解科学决策的智慧。
随着现代科技的发展，运筹学为人类的日常生活带来了许多便利，也拯救了很多生命。滴滴这样市值高达数百亿美元的网约车平台，利用最新的运筹学技术保证快速、智能并公平地匹配叫车乘客与平台司机。2012年诺贝尔经济学奖获得者埃尔文·罗斯设计的肾脏移植交换平台，则运用运筹学工具降低患者找到匹配肾脏的难度，并安全有效地分配肾源，从而拯救了数以万计患者的生命。
“人工智能的核心在于运用优化方法训练模型，使其在完成给定任务时仅仅产生‘最小误差’，”张任宇教授说，“如果没有运筹学的快速发展，现在人工智能领域最炫目的成就，诸如AlphaGo (阿尔法围棋是第一个击败人类职业围棋选手、第一个战胜围棋世界冠军的人工智能机器人。其主要工作原理是“深度强化学习”) 和无人驾驶技术，也就无从谈起。”