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Where should questions about operations research be asked? Is cross validated appropriate or are other sites within SE network better suited?

I have had a look at https://www.or-exchange.org/questions/, but that site does not seem to be terribly active (and, as noted here, is curently and possibly for ever shut down.)

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  • $\begingroup$ Why did you ask this on stats se meta and not maths se meta? Just wondering $\endgroup$
    – BCLC
    Commented Jun 26, 2020 at 7:50
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    $\begingroup$ Wella, this Is my Main siste of activity ... $\endgroup$
    – kjetil b halvorsen Mod
    Commented Jun 26, 2020 at 14:17

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NEWEST UPDATE: Operations Research Stack Exchange has now graduated from Beta, and is still at https://or.stackexchange.com/

UPDATE: Operations Research Stack Exchange is now in public Beta at https://or.stackexchange.com/ . So everyone can now actively participate.

https://www.or-exchange.org/questions/ has been permanently shut down due to SPAMMING. The new Stack Exchange site was chosen as a replacement for it.

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I think there is no clear-cut distinction possible. This is something inherent to all interdisciplinary fields (e.g. Systems Biology). For the case of Operational Research I think that only a relatively small number of operational research questions could fit neither on CV nor on the Computational Science beta. The website you mention is rather good too (when it is active).

If the question has a relatively clear statistical concept, I would suggest keeping in CV. If the meat of the question is on optimisation (e.g. "how to express X and Y constraints?"), I would suggest moving it to scicomp. Questions without a clear Statistics or Optimisation scope would have to be judged in an individual basis (maybe they should be migrated in Mathematics, Economics or Quant. Finance).

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As of April 2019, there's a new proposal Operations Research and Analytics on Area 51.

Update May 2019: the proposal has passed the commitment stage, and soon will be in public beta.

Update April 2020: Operations Research is open and functioning normally.

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    $\begingroup$ Great! Hope this will finally fly. $\endgroup$
    – gwr
    Commented Apr 27, 2019 at 22:17
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    $\begingroup$ I don't bear this particular proposal any ill-will but there are many good reasons why it's hard to get these proposals accepted. The trade-off between a big site with too much traffic for comfort and a small site with too little of interest to attract many participants is difficult and delicate. $\endgroup$
    – Nick Cox
    Commented Apr 29, 2019 at 12:05
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If your question deals with algorithmic components of operations research, then Stack Overflow is another site where it could be on topic. As somebody with a background in OR, I try to be active there in ; other tags on Stack Overflow that get OR-related questions include , , , , ...

Quoting a snippet from Stack Overflow's help center:

We feel the best Stack Overflow questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question generally covers [...] or a software algorithm [...] then you're in the right place to ask your question!

or-exchange is not part of Stack Exchange, but looking through their user page, some of the users there are big people in the field!

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As has been noted, some topics do run "across" sites. I do have a background in OR/MS myself and lo and behold so far I have been on Mathematica.SE and a bit of Stats.SE.

I have specialized on System Dynamics (SD) which is a systems modeling paradigm introduced mainly by Jay Forrester in the late 50s.

As of a week ago I have proposed a new Stack Exchange site in Area 51 which I have called Modeling and Simulation. The core criteria for that site in my opinion are:

  • use of models (which includes conceptual models not only quantitative models)
  • and/or use of computer simulation typically (but not exclusively) using common paradigms like System Dynamics (SD), Discrete Event Simulation (DES) or Agent-based Modeling (ABM)
  • supporting decision making in management of a complex system (e.g. some link to optimal control)

It is of course all fresh but instead of running around on very specialized sites there is merit I believe to have a dedicated page for Modeling and Simulation for Decision Support. Especially since pages dedicated to OR/MS, or System Dynamics and other topics in this area are often raising too little interest.

Maybe that is a site for you (and hopefully others) to help grow?

Update

As of today I have created a proposal for Management Science on Area 51 which I feel is somewhat lacking -- and which has an even broader focus than Modeling and Simulation.

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  • $\begingroup$ I just added a Community Promotion Ad for the proposal. $\endgroup$
    – gwr
    Commented Mar 31, 2016 at 16:38
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    $\begingroup$ Update 27 April 2019: Neither proposal got airborne, but see the similar proposal referred to by @Marcus Ritt. $\endgroup$
    – Nick Cox
    Commented Apr 27, 2019 at 17:26

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