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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

Solving business problems for a lifetime

The lighting dims as the classroom grows quiet. Two projections of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets appear on either side of the wall displaying statistics on the National Basketball Association's Dallas Mavericks. \nAs a professor of Decision Sciences in the business school, Dr. Wayne Winston's job is to instruct his MBA students to use mathematical and analytical tools to solve business problems. \n"I think the phrase is if you show someone a fish today, they'll eat today," said Winston, who has been teaching at IU for 27 years. "But if you teach them how to fish, they'll eat for a lifetime. I want to teach them (students) how to solve business problems throughout their career."\nThe tools Winston teaches his students are the same ones he utilizes in his work for the Mavericks, Microsoft, Eli Lilly, Bristol Myers Squibb, Intel and Cisco.\nWinston simplifies information so well that these companies hire him regularly to teach them how to solve their respective business problems.\nDallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, an IU graduate, hired Winston and his longtime college friend Jeff Sagarin to use their mathematical, analytical and computer skills to improve the Mavericks by analyzing two important and practical basketball issues: referees and prospective lineups.\nEvaluations of each NBA official start and end on what calls they make the most and with what frequency. For instance, if one official who frequently calls offensive fouls is refereeing the Mavericks game, Winston alerts the Mavs to watch their aggressiveness when attacking the basket.\n"With the officials it gives us an advantage because we know which refs fall outside the norm for certain calls," Cuban said. "So if a guy doesn't call charges or does call three seconds we can adjust."\nWinston and Sagarin also evaluate the success of various lineups for the Mavericks. No matter the issue, the question for Winston always comes back to a math problem and how to solve it. The spreadsheets show him and his students the answer.\n"The last 10 years all I've done is try to learn how to solve business problems with spreadsheets," Winston said. "Most people in my field acknowledge that that's the best way to teach, and I was one of the first people to do it. In that sense I've got ahead."\nMicrosoft hires Winston every other month, and he teaches their employees how to use their own product, Microsoft Excel.\n"They can't get enough of learning how to solve real problems because most people are smart out there," Winston said, "but they don't know what they can do. They don't know what the capabilities are of a computer these days."\nWinston's math skills were not fully developed until he graduated with a degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1971. The 52-year-old Livingston, N.J., native and two-time Jeopardy champion earned his Ph.D. in operations research at Yale. For Winston, the decision to teach at a business school was an easy one.\n"It was the best job I got," Winston said. \nThe sandy-haired Winston had to make the difficult transition from highly theoretical disciplines to practical business problems. Professor Ashok Soni, a colleague of Winston's, said the transition wasn't easy.\n"His biggest obstacle at the professional level has been the transition from a very theoretical foundation to a practical foundation," Soni said. "I'm sure he has struggled with that."\nBut spreadsheets eased the transition. Winston first used Lotus, and in 1992, he switched to Microsoft Excel. Ever since, Winston has used the program to develop his spreadsheet skills and transfer a once theoretical curriculum into a practical discipline.\n"The first 10 years I was here I would say we mainly did theoretical stuff," Winston said. "But now the spreadsheets are available and that makes it real easy to do the projects. Now, I can get students to solve real problems that 15 years ago I could have never given them."\nHe has based his courses around real-world examples ever since. Winston teaches K510 -- "Decision Modeling for the Department of Operations and Decision Technology." His mission for the course is to teach students to solve business problems with spreadsheets and to show them "how a spreadsheet can model just about anything."\nOne business problem example discussed in Winston's class is how the U.S. Army misallocated its helicopter resources in 1980 during the attempted rescue of U.S. hostages in Iran. The army sent eight helicopters, but only needed six to work. The army said the helicopters had about a 60 percent chance of working, but if the army sent eight or more they might be spotted by radar. \nIt turns out that only five of the helicopters worked and the U.S. needed six. And America was unsuccessful in the rescue attempt because, as Winston and his class figures, they needed 14. The number results from the Monte Carlo simulation that allows the class to continually play out uncertain situations to find the proper solution.\n"There could have been a totally different history if they'd actually use the stuff that we teach in class," Winston said. "If you mathematically analyze it, they made a big mistake by not sending enough helicopters."\nWinston's challenge is to present the information so the average MBA student understands it. He presents each class with an example and a blank spreadsheet, and then solves it for his students step-by-step.\nWinston's simplicity is what separates him from other instructors, Soni said.\n"If you look at his stuff and the way he delivers it, he makes a very complicated topic understandable," Soni said. "And that really sets him apart from the other instructors."\nStill, the pace is more than a walk in the park, said Vasanth Shenai, one of Winston's students.\n"I think the best thing he does is walking us through the examples," Shenai said. "It's at a brisk pace, but as long as you get the steps you can figure it out on your own"

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