Teaching Tips – Page 15 – The OM Blog by Heizer, Render, & Munson

Teaching Tip: Baseball and Correlation Analysis

When you are covering the subject of correlation analysis (Chapter 4) and want to provide an example that may interest your students (especially the sports-oriented ones), here is a 2 paragraph quote from a recent WSJ article (Sept.17, 2010,p.W-8). The article suggests that more than any major league baseball season in recent memory, the size of a team’s payroll isn’t tied to winning.

“According to estimated figures updated throughout the season, the correlation between a team’s player payroll and its winning percentage is 0.14, a number that makes the relationship almost statistically irrelevant. That figure is 67% below last year’s mark and is easily the lowest since the strike.”

“This outcome represents a stark reversal from the state of affairs a decade ago. In 1998, the correlation between payrolls and wins was 0.71, a figure that suggests a strong and significant tie. And in the 1999 season, when the correlation was 0.5, all eight teams that reached baseball’s playoffs were among the top ten spenders.”

This can make for a nice class discussion. First, it shows that terms from the text show up even on the sports page. But let the students compute the R squares for these correlations and interpret the relationships for those values. If the R-square was 0.504 in 1998, and 0.25 in 1999,what explains the rest of the variation?

I love the Journal’s sports section and hope you also find some of the statistics on that page interesting.

Teaching Tip:Using Software to Solve Homework Problems

When I look back at 35 years of textbook writing, I sometimes think that my biggest contribution to OM pedagogy was writing the early versions of AB:POM. These were the PC programs that allow students to solve about 95% of the homework problems in the text. I remember coding them in BASIC, in 1980 on my Apple 2e. Thank goodness for Professor Howard Weiss at Temple U., who had the skill to bring about the upgrade to POM for Windows (and then to create Excel OM) a decade or so later.

I usually spend a half hour demonstrating how to use these programs, free to students, the first week of class. They pick up on the inputs easily and are very happy to avoid doing regressions, SPC, and inventory modeling by hand. I know some profs don’t use software in their course, but my view has always been to stress output interpretation, rather than hand calculations.

Students have called me years later to tell me they still find the software useful in their jobs.

Which one to use, POM or Excel OM? I used to show both and let the students pick their favorite. But later I decided to focus on Excel OM, the Excel add-in. Its open coding shows the formula and looks like the spreadsheets they are used to. Any homework problems with an X next to it can be solved in Excel OM, and any with a P by POM (which is written in C++).

Teaching Tip: Using Guest Lecturers

Sure it can hurt your self-esteem when teaching evaluations are turned in and several students comment that “the most valuable part of the course” was the guest speakers! Somehow, executives who visit our classes are viewed as having more expertise then we have. I guess its only human nature; just like elementary school kids who believe what a teacher tells them more than what their parents say. I can’t tell you how many times my sons have said I was dead wrong when I helped with their math homework (despite my 3 degrees in math related fields).

But it is true that guest speakers, when carefully selected, checked out, and given a 45 -50 minutes schedule, can enhance a class. One of my colleagues at Rollins College has said he has no time for guests in his class. “There is just too much material to cover,” he says. I disagree.

Over the years I developed a cadre of 6 -8 excellent guest lecturers. One is the Frito-Lay VP-Operations for Florida (who always brings a huge box of chips – the students devour them as if they have never eaten before). One is from Darden (who generously gives out $5 gift cards to Red Lobster and/or Olive Garden). Another is former CEO of Tupperware, who tells the story of a $90 million OM decision that went very bad. My favorite speaker while teaching at Rollins was the late Philip Crosby, the well-known author and quality guru. He never missed a semester and lectured to scores of my classes. It turns out that even famous people are more than honored to come and lecture in a college.

Get to know your speakers first, ask to see any Power Points they intend to use for your quick review/input, and thank them every semester with a gift that has the college name on it.

MyOMLab: An Author’s View

We are thrilled that over 150 colleges – and over 5,000 students – are using our MyOMLab homework and assessment software this semester. It certainly changed our lives as teachers for the better – and the students seem to thrive using it. If you aren’t familiar with the system, just go to www.myomlab.com to take a tour.

With four years of experience under our belts (first in its predecessor PHGA), Jay and I can share some of our MyOMLab experience with you, and hopefully, make a few useful suggestions.

Just up front, though, I want to promise that we have created a system that you can count on. I would say that we invested 1,000s of hours to create the algorithmic and book match versions of the more than 700 problems in MyOMLab. The coding and testing were tough jobs, but we think the final product makes teaching and learning OM easier on everyone.

So what is my tip of the week? I have used MyOMLab successfully for weekly homework assignments and for tests/quizzes. I have also assigned weekly “pre-quizzes”, selecting 10 or so multiple choice questions from the 2,000 question Text Bank (also part of MyOMLab). These pre class assignments forced the students to read each chapter before I covered it in class. Since the assignment is open-book, it’s hard to miss an answer. I weigh the pre-quizzes at 10% of the course grade and the students are thrilled to wrack-up A’s every week.

What a pleasure this has been! For the first time, students are ready for the lecture. They have read the chapter in advance! Jay has implemented the same system with his students and couldn’t believe the difference in how much more engaged the students were. Let us know what you think.