Linear Programming

One of my LinkedIn contacts, Anthony Smoak, who's doing a business analytics master's degree at the prestigious Duke University, shared a tutorial about linear programming that he is currently learning.

I had first encountered linear programming while studying Operations Research during a master's in building engineering nearly 40 years ago. I never really got a chance to use optimization skills during my career, and had, of course, forgotten almost everything about it.

Out of curiosity, I fed a screenshot of the business problem that Antony shared into Google Gemini. In a few seconds, it's gave back the result, that matched what Anthony showed in his tutorial !!

Anthony went on to explain the real power of linear programming is if you get into the more advanced sensitivity analysis. Anthony had a video for his youTube Channel members only section ($4/month level).

However, Google Gemini had no problem doing the sensitivity analysis for this problem either!!

Takeaway:

Studying a master's degree is useful. In my mind, the main value one gets is networking - meeting like-minded people, many of who later on go on to highly successful careers of their own.

College costs in the U.S. are, of course, extremely expensive. As far as the knowledge gained in those courses, you may not necessarily get a chance to apply these in practice. Most importantly, in 2026

Google Gemini can solve these kinds of optimization problems in a trice, at a fraction of the price.