
First of all, I am glad to be here and to have the opportunity of sharing my ideas on this collective blog on Operations Research, which is a project that I should especially express my appreciation for. My friends, Sertalp, Ahmet and Pelin are doing a great job by running this blog and I believe that, in the next few years, many people in the field will be following this blog, if we can manage to keep it active.
In my first post, I would like to touch a topic that is closely related to what we are doing here in this blog: Sharing ideas and the knowledge. I would like to talk about open courses on Operations Research.
As a PhD student, in order to internalize a subject in mathematics or in any other field, it is not enough to take its course most of the time. While taking a course for the first time, you may miss some important details. That is why I would go and listen some basic courses again and again in order to completely absorb its intuition, if I had enough time. And there are courses that I took years ago that I did not really use and therefore forgot them. Moreover, I don’t have reach to some courses in my school or I would prefer to listen it from its pioneers at MIT. One can put forward many similar arguments for why most of us need open courses available on YouTube etc. But beyond all of these arguments, in this century, it is senseless to make the (well organized) basic knowledge to privilege to some people, e.g. those who live in the U.S., go to X university, are able to pay more than $1000 to a few text books etc. I think that this is an obstacle in front of the development, in a global and broad sense. For all these reasons, I am a deep-heart fan of open course initiatives.
I cannot tell how much I like being able to listen to Linear Algebra from Prof. Gilbert Strang from MIT, or the Sociology 1 course from Prof. Ann Swidler from Stanford, and similarly, how much I wish to had Operations Research courses online, such as, Dynamic Programming from Prof. Dimitri Bertsekas. Here, in this collective blog on OR, I would like to kindly ask the professors in the universities who are teaching OR courses: If you are teaching an OR course, and if you believe that you are good at teaching, please encourage your university to put them online. It is going to motivate many people, all around the world, to learn this material and employ them in their research in very different fields. Being have to read that material from the book is discouraging for many people, not necessarily because people are lazy, but because learning is affected by many factors, even by the mimics of the professor while explaining the topic.
Here, I want to list some open courses of which the complete set of video lectures are available online at selected universities. If you guys know similar other courses that are not listed here, you can write them down in the comments with a link, so we can use this post as a resource for OR students.
Thanks in advance and see you in the new posts.
* We keep updating the list. Thanks everyone for contributing in the list. Last Update: 02/15/13
Courses on Operations Research (or related):
- Introduction to Algorithms – MIT – Prof. Charles Leiserson
- Linear Programming – Bilkent U. – Prof. Barbaros Tansel
- Analytical Models for Supply Chain – Bilkent U. – Prof. Nesim Erkip
- Facility Location on Networks – Bilkent U. – Prof. Barbaros Tansel
- Stochastic Models – Bilkent U. -Prof. Savaş Dayanık
- Intro. to Modeling and Optimization – Bilkent U. – Prof. Emre Alper Yıldırım
- A Process Outlook for Industrial Engineering – Bilkent U. – Prof. Nesim Erkip
- Intro. to Lean Six Sigma Methods – MIT – Prof. Earll Murman
- Mathematical Methods for Engineers – MIT – Prof. Gilbert Strang
- Machine Learning – Stanford – Andrew Ng
- Design and Analysis of Algorithms – Stanford – Prof. Tim Roughgarden
- Unsupervised Feature Learning – Stanford – Andrew Ng
- Machine Learning – Caltech – Prof.Yaser Abu-Mostafa
- Convex Optimization I – Stanford – Prof. Stephen Boyd
- Convex Optimization II – Stanford – Prof. Stephen Boyd
Courses for necessary Mathematical Background:
- Discrete Stochastic Processes – MIT – Prof. Robert Gallager
- Probabilistic Systems Analysis and Applied Probability – MIT – Prof. John Tsitliklis
- Linear Algebra – MIT – Prof. Gilbert Strang
- Single Variable Calculus – MIT – Prof. David Jerison
- Multivariable Calculus – MIT – Prof. Denis Auroux
- Differential Equations – MIT – Prof. Arthur Mattuck
- Real Analysis – Bilkent U. – Prof. Alexandre Gontcharov
- Discrete Math and Prob. Theory – U.C. Berkeley – Prof. Umesh Vazirani
Online Books on Operations Research:
- Convex Optimization – S. Boyd, L. Vandenberghe – Cambridge University Press
@orcomplete Fantastic resource!
I want to add
Machine Learning – Caltech – Prof.Yaser Abu-Mostafa.
I watched these lectures a few times.
Great! I was looking for Machine Learning Courses. But I had not checked Caltech yet.. It is nice to see that Caltech has this!
I think we also should note https://www.coursera.org/courses
Incredibly useful! MT @orcomplete Open Courses on Operations Research http://t.co/X7lkWypq #orms
@orcomplete This is awesome, thanks for compiling.
@orcomplete Great resource! elinize saglik
You may want to add http://www.stanford.edu/~boyd/cvxbook/ and related courses.
You might want to add these courses that are right up our alley:
https://www.coursera.org/course/linearopt
https://www.coursera.org/course/optimization
And also, since Financial Engineering is now considered a branch of OR:
https://www.coursera.org/course/fe
Hello to everyone, I need some advice from you guys. I just started learning OR by reading Taha intro to OR, but I can understand not everything that is in the book. I think i lack some basic background for learning or. Could you please tell me what are the MUST for starting with OR. Would really appreciate any help
Well I really enjoyed reading it. This information procured by you is very practical for correct planning. ekeeebbabead
I like OR. I’m preparing to be a pioneer.
I need a high ranking online postgrad OR course. Please recommend.
Hi, this is a very nice post. Thanks for the information. I want to add these also for OR..
1. http://nptel.ac.in/courses/112106134/
2. http://nptel.ac.in/courses/112106131/
A comprehensive series of lectures! Thanks for your contribution.
hi thank you for reporting this
Hi Guys,
Really useful resources here.
I have a bachelor degree in mathematics and a master degree in supply chain and operations specialized in Operations research from France. I came to US and pursued a master in industrial technology and operations. I am currently operations AnaIyst and scheduler. I haven’t been doing real OR and programming for 2 years and would like to get back to these field ideally as operation research analyst in R&D or consultant. I am a bit rusty and do not have a specialized degree from US.
Does anyone knows any organization which could deliver me an accreditation or acknowledgement of level in OR field?
Thank you for your help.
I hav a question about Operation Research course (matimatical question)
Please can u make an UPDATE on your topic ? thank you
That’s great! Thank you!
Hi all. Forst of all thank you for compiling all the courses in one place.
To introduce my baclground, i have BS in chemical engineering and have been looking for a job for a year but jave not got one yet. I am great at mathematics and have done reaearch in my bachelors. Considering the growth of this field and statistics i decided to look more into details about this field and pursue MS in operation research analyat field. However, i am curious about job market about this job for freshers with MS degree. I have do e deep research on job postings and found out many compnies require skills like programming and statistical modeling experience. Considering this i would like to have your opinion of my chances of getting a good job after completion of my MS. Please do advise me.
Hello, I am very new to the world of operations research. I was recently admitted to Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kenya,Africa,fresh from High School. This is the first time this course is being offered here in Kenya and East Africa at large,therefore i’m having concerns with regards to marketability and employment. How best can I use this newly found knowledge to break ground in places where OR hasn’t been properly explored yet?
Thank you so much for your help.
See also: Optimization Methods in Management Science (by MIT – OpenCourseWare)
Question: Is anyone aware of some certification for OR (or at least only Networks Optimization) at “reasonable prices”? I’ve found few unaffordable options. Maybe some program/cert from state Universities in Europe? Thank you for the info and for the great idea of this page.
good attempt
Thanks a lot for creating this list. It is very helpful for someone like me who did not know where to begin