Using Mixed-Integer Programming to Win a Cycling Game

Please scroll down for article-it is on subsequent pagesWith 12,500 members from nearly 90 countries, INFORMS is the largest international association of operations research (O.R.) and analytics professionals and students. INFORMS provides unique networking and learning opportunities for individual professionals, and organizations of all types and sizes, to better understand and use O.R. and analytics tools and methods to transform strategic visions and achieve better outcomes. For more information on INFORMS, its publications, membership, or meetings visit Abstract. This paper describes a carbon trading game to be played in a classroom setting. The game is modeled on real-world electric power markets with a carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions cap, often referred to as a "cap-and-trade" system. Players assume the roles of competing utilities, each with a fossil fuel plant and a renewable energy plant. Any electricity generated by fossil fuel requires offsetting carbon credits, which are available via auction. Depending on the auction price, it can be cheaper or more expensive to generate electricity with fossil fuel versus renewables. The goals of the game are: for students to become acquainted with cap-and-trade markets; to understand how regulatory policy applied to a market can induce environmental benefits; to discover how to mathematically derive strategies; to get a taste of basic game theory, auctions, and the newsvendor problem; and to meet these objectives in a fun setting. While fairly straightforward and simplified to provide symmetry among student competitors, the game can lead to surprisingly interesting results. This paper describes the game and how to facilitate it, presents strategies, analyzes games that were played, introduces novel quantitative measures to evaluate the quality of game play, and offers a number of suggestions for extending the game.

Section: Literature Review: Classroom Games For Operations Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Game—A Carbon Emissions Game

Frommer¹,

Day²

2017

“…We have received positive feedback from students in all of these classes. To more formally evaluate the game, we adjusted the first part of the questionnaire by Beliën et al (2011) so that it would comply with our game and objectives. In these questions, we measure (1) to what extent the game facilitated the learning of specific concepts (e.g., variability, centralized planning), and (2) to what extent the students' interest in and knowledge of OM is increased.…”

Section: Our Experiencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Game—The BedGame—A Classroom Game Based on Real Healthcare Challenges

Vliegen

Zonderland

2017

Abstract. The BedGame is a classroom game to introduce Operations Management (OM) in healthcare, more specifically to introduce the effects of centralized versus decentralized planning, and the concepts of variability and queueing theory. In the BedGame, players assign medical and surgical specialties to nursing wards to obtain a balanced bed distribution, while fulfilling as many of the specialty-specific requirements as possible. The game was first designed to support decision making in a hospital in The Netherlands, and afterwards converted to a classroom game. The game has been successfully used in several courses at the University of Twente including "Operations Management in Health Care" (undergraduate), "Quantitative Methods for Operations Management in Health Care" (graduate), and a course on patient logistics for healthcare professionals.

“…Because the EnergyState game can be used to teach IP, we only focus here on games that address IP. For instance, Beliën et al (2011) present an IP model to find an optimal cycling team for the Gigabike game, addressing three types of modeling techniques: knapsack problems, multiperiod problems, and modeling if-then constraints. There are also many existing puzzles that can be solved using IP.…”

Section: Case Studies and Gamesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Students playing the game typically try to find a feasible solution (mix of plants) based on a trial-and-error approach. Note that as compared to other operations research (OR) games and puzzles (see, e.g., Chlond 2005Chlond , 2009Chlond , 2011Meuffels and den Hertog 2010;Beliën et al 2011), the input data of the optimization model are not given to the student in a very straightforward and clear way but have to be extracted out of the game by the students themselves.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Integer Programming Starting From an Energy Supply Game

Beliën

Colpaert

Boeck

et al. 2013

Self Cite

T his paper presents an integer programming (IP) model for solving an online energy supply game. Instead of a traditional approach in which students are given a problem statement and asked to develop an IP model, both the problem and data are hidden in the game. The energy supply game can be used to illustrate many mathematical programming concepts including blending constraints, multiobjective programming, and the branch-and-bound method. In addition to developing IP modeling skills, students become familiar with the properties of several energy supply systems. The results of two experiments and the related evaluation questionnaires indicate that the game component motivates students more to build IP models as compared to classic approaches.