Word: belled
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...young Bell scientist makes a major math breakthrough
...branch of mathematics known as linear programming. It is the kind of math that has frustrated theoreticians for years, and even the fastest and most powerful computers have had great difficulty juggling the bits and pieces of data. Now Narendra Karmarkar, a 28-year-old Indian-born mathematician at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., after only a year's work has cracked the puzzle of linear programming by devising a new algorithm, a step-by-step mathematical formula. He has translated the procedure into a program that should allow computers to track a greater combination of tasks than...
Unlike most advances in theoretical mathematics, Karmarkar's work will have an immediate and major impact on the real world. "Breakthrough is one of the most abused words in science," says Ronald Graham, director of mathematical sciences at Bell Labs. "But this is one situation where it is truly appropriate...
When the computer program be comes available to commercial users, American Airlines will be far from the only customer waiting in line. Bell Labs' parent company, AT&T, will probably employ the algorithm to route millions of telephone calls through hundreds of thousands of cities and towns more efficiently and profitably. Exxon has expressed interest in Karmarkar's program to help improve its allocation of supplies of crude oil among various refineries. For many large companies, says Graham, finding the best solution, as opposed to one that is merely workable, "can mean the difference between a good balance...
...books are real, and they are the product of a process that outgoing Secretary of Education Terrel Bell has labeled the "dumbing down" of study materials for U.S. classrooms. Significantly, in a study at Harvard of sample texts and standardized test scores for Grades 1,8 and 11, Reading Expert Jeanne Chall discovered a correlation between textbook quality and learning. "We saw that in the years SAT scores went down," she says, "the year before, textbooks had also declined," The roots of dumbing down go back to the 1920s, when schools began systematic testing of students and concluded that...