Data, Models, and Decisions: The Fundamentals of Management Science

by Dimitris Bertsimas

This book represents a departure from existing textbooks. Rather than covering methodology, the book introduces decision support systems through real world applications, and uses spreadsheets to model and solve problems. It uses management science techniques (statistics, simulation, probabilistic modeling and optimization), but only as tools to facilitate problem solving. The book embraces George Dantzig's dictum as its "The final test of any theory is its capacity to solve the problems which originated it." The book is used in the core MBA program at MIT's Sloan School of Management for the class "Data, Models and Decisions". It is used in over ten universities in both core and elective classes, including Stanford University, Chicago's graduate school of Business, Babson College, among several others. The book contains many real business cases from the authors' consulting experience. Instructor resources are available for faculty who have adopted the book for their course by contacting the authors directly @ dbertsim@mit.edu, rfreund@mit.edu )

Genres: Business, Textbooks, Nonfiction

530 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Renata Sandor · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have read this book for a Business Analysis course just now, in 2020. This book was written in 2004 and solely available in the US. Which means that you should order it a month before you plan to read it. (Several people in the class didn't get it in time)

Disregarding its publishing time, it is informative and explains through examples. But it is outdated with the excel references and because of the structure of it, (because of the long exercises) the concept what you need to grasp isn't so clear. And, I need to say this, it is pricy. I hope they will rewrite it and make a handbook and a workbook separately to make it more readable. There is no solution to the the exercises unless you are teaching at an institution (then you can have access material). So I wouldn't try to study from it by myself. Given the usefulness of the book in 2020, I give it two stars.

[Zarmeen Lakhani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made me fall in love with analytics

[Kelsey Jorgensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for class. Heavy on mathematical theory (for me anyway), but also includes many helpful examples.

[KC]

Although a bit tedious, the content is actually presented quite well. The cases are relevant and come from real-world situations. The formulas are a bit cryptic, but you can figure them out if you try long enough.

[Ignacio Moya]

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[Muhammad Zubair]

it is very good book to read