rhbartels@watcgl.UUCP (Richard Bartels) (01/16/85)
The following came over a small network maintained by numerical analysts, rerouted from an original posting to the Stanford SCORE bulletin board. I am forwarding it without agreeing or disagreeing. I just like to watch a good fight. --------------------------------------- From: Irvin Lustig <OR.LUSTIG@SU-SIERRA.ARPA> Subject: "Facts" on Karmarkar To: su-bboards@SU-SIERRA.ARPA A recent question was posted as to why there was a mild disturbance at the talk given last Friday by Narendra Karmarkar. The community should realize the motivation for the attendees to question Karmarkar's computational results. As most people know, Karmarkar has claimed that his algorithm has run 50 times faster than the Simplex Method. However, this has NOT been substantiated at ANY talk given by Karmarkar. No person outside of AT&T Bell Labs has seen the nature of the problems solved (i.e., number of rows, number of columns, or sparsity structure) nor the CPU time consumed by solving any of these problems. What this all means is that the jury is still out on his algorithm. No one has yet substantiated his claims, and Karmarkar refused to show any results to members of the O.R. department here at Stanford in private sessions on Friday morning. His talk last Friday was very similar to ones that have occurred all over the country. Another interesting point is that Karmarkar has ignored some of the past research done in similar areas. In repeated conversations with members of the O.R. community, he has refused to acknowledge some of the early results done in the field. Some of us feel that there is a loss of scholarship here, and we're not too happy about it. -Irvin Lustig O.R. Dept. ------- R>re) nor the CPU time consumed by solving any of these problems. What this all means is that the jury is still out on his algorithm. No one has yet substantiated his claims, and Karmarkar refused to show any results to members of the O.R. department here at Stanford in private sessions on Friday morning. His talk last Friday was very similar to ones that have occurred all over the country. Another interesting point is that Karmarkar has ignored some of the past research done in similar areas. In repeated conversations with members of the O.R. community, he has refused to acknowledge some of the early results done in the field. Some of us feel that there is a loss of scholarship here, and we're not too happy about it. -Irvin Lustig O.R. Dept. -------