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Decision-making touches everyone -- from the individual in the voting booth to
the corporate manager in charge of airline schedules or the public health
official weighing the risks and benefits of a new drug treatment.
Now, the University has redesigned an undergraduate major to allow students to
understand complex decision-making and prepare them for careers in a wide range
of fields, from insurance and corporate planning to public health and regional
planning.
The Mathematical Decision Sciences (MDS) Program -- one of the few such
undergraduate programs in the country -- is administered jointly by the
departments of operations research and statistics. Students who major or minor
in MDS will study the quantitative techniques required to make difficult
choices -- calculus, probability, operations research and statistics -- while
learning to master sophisticated computer software.
Decision-making requires the collection and analysis of large amounts of data,
the handling of elements of uncertainty and risk, and the analysis of the
consequences of the particular options, said Jon Tolle, MDS director and
professor of mathematics and operations research.
A decision-maker uses statistics to help analyze available data or design
experiments from which to extract data, such as when medical tests are devised
to obtain reliable results on the effects of different drugs on a specific
health condition. A degree of uncertainty -- for example, that associated with
human behavior or that caused by the random effects of nature -- is involved in
almost all areas of the social, managerial and physical sciences. In MDS,
students learn about probability models that are used to address such
uncertainty and to assess likely outcomes.
Decision analysts also use quantitative measures of costs and benefits
developed by operations researchers to weigh various factors and outcomes and
mathematical optimization techniques for determining the best decisions.
Students in the MDS program will have a wide range of choices for employment
upon graduation. "The job markets for actuaries, statisticians and operations
research analysts have been quite strong in the past and are expected to remain
so in the foreseeable future," said Tolle.
The Mathematical Decision Sciences Program is excellent preparation for
graduate study in areas such as statistics, operations research, management
science, industrial engineering, biostatistics, systems analysis, financial
analysis, psychology, public health and city and regional planning. An
undergraduate degree in MDS, combined with a few years of work experience, also
is good preparation for pursuing a master's of business administration degree,
Tolle said.
In addition, Carolina students with advanced placement credits who have
maintained a B+ average in the MDS program could complete the five-year BS-MS
program in Operations Research. For additional information contact Jon Tolle at
2-3839, e-mail tolle@email.unc.edu or see http://www.or.unc.edu/MDSweb/
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