STA32310: Operations Research

1.1.            ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF O.R.

To first view, Operations research (or the operational research) is a recent technique, dating at most of World War II. And, in fact, it is well to its application to the military operations that it owes its name. 

But really, it is a lot older. Since the XVIIs Century, Blaise Pascal and Pierre Fermat, inventors of the notion of expectation of a random variable (1654), looked for, followed from Jacques Bernoulli, to solve problems of decision in the uncertain situation.