Research Reveals the Optimal Way to Optimize

The leading approach to the simplex method, a widely used technique for balancing complex logistical constraints, can't get any better. In 1939, upon arriving late to his statistics course at UC Berkeley, George Dantzig--a first-year graduate student--copied two problems off the blackboard, thinking they were a homework assignment. He found the homework "harder to do than usual," he would later recount, and apologized to the professor for taking some extra days to complete it. A few weeks later, his professor told him that he had solved two famous open problems in statistics. Dantzig's work would provide the basis for his doctoral dissertation and, decades later, inspiration for the film .