Is there such a thing as communist operations research or is this a contradiction in terms? I'd imagine people using the simplex method, for instance, to figure out how to distribute their community's food, housing, etc. the most efficiently. A cursory search just yields discussions of large scale central management in the PRC.
#OperationsResearch #operations #Communism #Socialism #CommunityOrganizing #SolarPunk
@caten Linear programming was basically invented for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Kantorovich
@OscarCunningham Thanks for making me aware of this! I was originally told it was invented by the US Air Force: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dantzig
@caten @OscarCunningham I believe Dantzig is attributed to discovering the simplex method, an important algorithm within linear programming theory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplex_algorithm?wprov=sfla1
Although he is an important figure within operations research, I don't believe he founded the field. I also believe that most of the field of linear programming was developed in parallel among Kantorovich, Danzig, and others because of the cold war between the Soviets and Americans.
@caten @OscarCunningham if you want to go down a rabbit hole: there was a huge controversy when an early version of the interior-point method was patented:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karmarkar%27s_algorithm