Austin Buchanan

And the vibe coding tool for mathematical optimization would be A Math Programmer’s Lollipop, or AMPL for short

APL = Alan Perlis Lollipop. Ok I’ll stop

Or maybe “A Programmer’s Lollipop”. APL for short

If I were creating a GenAI tool for vibe coding, I’d call it ALollipop

Breaking: Supreme Court Reverses Lower Court Order That Redrew Congressional Map in Staten Island, with Ominous Implications for Voting Rights Act #ELB I’m on the road so this will be brief. The Supreme Court over the dissent of the three liberal Justices reversed a lower court order requiring the drawing of a minority opportunity district that the l...

Breaking: Supreme Court Reverses Lower Court Order That Redrew Congressional Map in Staten Island, with Ominous Implications for Voting Rights Act electionlawblog.org?p=154596

bsky.app/profile/stev...

And another… bsky.app/profile/stev...

In 2019 I created a Story Map explainer of NC's distinctive county grouping requirement for legislative redistricting. Soon that resource will vanish (Esri is retiring that old platform). If you want a refresher on the so-called "Stephenson" process, now's the time! #NCPol
1/3
arcg.is/1DnDO

In 2020, Stephenson did quite well in terms of minimizing splits. The state house map is optimal, and the state senate map is suboptimal by only two splits. pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1... But the method can fail spectacularly if the populations are chosen just so… if I ever write that up…

Essentially, a heuristic method to minimize county splitting, as proposed by NC courts

Combinatorial-Optimization-in-Gurobi/connected-dominating-set.ipynb at main · AustinLBuchanan/Combinatorial-Optimization-in-Gurobi Combinatorial Optimization in Gurobi. Contribute to AustinLBuchanan/Combinatorial-Optimization-in-Gurobi development by creating an account on GitHub.

The CDS formulation is especially neat. One type of constraint, but exponentially many of them:

\sum_{ i in C } x_i >= 1 for every vertex cut C in the graph

github.com/AustinLBucha...

GitHub - AustinLBuchanan/Combinatorial-Optimization-in-Gurobi: Combinatorial Optimization in Gurobi Combinatorial Optimization in Gurobi. Contribute to AustinLBuchanan/Combinatorial-Optimization-in-Gurobi development by creating an account on GitHub.

Several of these are implemented here (e.g., k-club, TSP, CDS) github.com/AustinLBucha...

I have had more success with lazy cuts over user cuts, particularly for problems with connectivity constraints (e.g., TSP, connected dominating set, districting). But you can’t quite compare “cuts” versus “no cuts” because the “no cuts” model is incomplete. But you can compare against flow models

Question for #orms people: do you know any problem-specific cutting planes that are not too hard to explain and separate and would improve performance compared to a baseline MIP solver (e.g. SCIP, Gurobi)? Asking because its more fun for students if they implement something and it helps performance

There’s a new paper on arXiv saying the matching polytope has extension complexity O*( 1.5^n ), beating the Edmonds bound O( 2^n ).

Stitt executive order addresses Oklahoma university degree programs, tenures Gov. Kevin Stitt signed two executive orders Thursday that call for reforms at Oklahoma institutions of higher education.

Also this local news article www.kgou.org/education/20...

You are correct. Here’s a statement from our Provost slatehr.okstate.edu/go?cmd=messa...

Usually 1, but sometimes 2. The trouble is things like { x | |x| <= 5 } vs { x : |x| <= 5 }

Update on the case: bsky.app/profile/redi...

Districts of the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi:

www.tbp.org/districts.cfm

There should be a joke here about how the Howie Hua (HH) counts are close to the congressional apportionment numbers from the Huntington-Hill (HH) method. Oklahoma is 5 either way

Why are LaTeX's default page margins so wide?
www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/09...

The expert’s corrected report indents the direct quote vhdshf2oms2wcnsvk7sdv3so.blob.core.windows.net/thearp-media...

The expert updated his report, and the paper with @pietrobelotti.bsky.social is mentioned in a correspondence to the court vhdshf2oms2wcnsvk7sdv3so.blob.core.windows.net/thearp-media...

I was grateful to be quoted in this great early look at the midterms in today's Washington Post. As I told the reporter, I think the redistricting wars are basically a draw in the short-term, but the long-term loser is American democracy. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Strengthening Ethical Standards in Scholarly Publishing at INFORMS | ORMS Today INFORMS has long been committed to advancing research of the highest quality. With over 11,000 annual submissions across 17 journals, the vitality of our publishing program reflects both the ambition ...

New Publication Ethics Policy for @informs.bsky.social. Created partially to address “emerging challenges unique to today’s publishing environment, including the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI)” pubsonline.informs.org/do/10.1287/o...

I have desk-rejected papers for many reasons. This year was the first time I did so because of non-existent references

OK Supreme Court strikes 2025 social studies standards for violating Open Meeting Act The Oklahoma Supreme Court stuck down the revised 2025 social studies standards, finding their approval violated the Open Meetings Act.

nondoc.com/2025/12/16/o...

And the equations are screenshots. That’s one way to get LaTeX into a Word document

Our #orms paper was plagiarized in an expert witness’s report (Exhibit A in Williams v. NYBOE). I don’t know whether to be flattered or upset…

Expert report: vhdshf2oms2wcnsvk7sdv3so.blob.core.windows.net/thearp-media...
Our paper: pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1...