The Operations Research / Management Science Blog

An interesting article on New York Times talked about a management science professor, Philip M. Parker, who developed computer algorithms that collect a substantial amount of publicly available information on a particular subject and turn the results into books. He has generated more than 200,000 books in this way, making him “the most published author in the history of the planet.”.

… aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one.

Some examples of the books he generated are titled “The 2007-2012 Outlook for Lemon-Flavored Bottled Water in Japan”, “Webster’s English to Italian Crossword Puzzles” and “The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India”. It is obvious that the production of some of these books involves using computer algorithms to take data about past sales and make complex calculations to forecast future sales. Given the years that the author wants to cover, Professor Parker’s algorithm selects the optimum model for predicting sales and then exports the resulting information to a Word document. Therefore, to quote from the author of the article — “it is perhaps more accurate to call Mr. Parker a compiler than an author.”

“Using a little bit of artificial intelligence, a computer program has been created that mimics the thought process of someone who would be responsible for doing such a study,” Mr. Parker says. “But rather than taking many months to do the study. the computer accomplishes this in about 13 minutes.”

In addition, Professor Parker is developing new algorithms for other genres such as romance novels, which apparently need more complicated calculations.

Some readers claimed that some medical books compiled by Professor Parker are a bit too generic and can be virtually applied to almost any particular disease. Professor Parker responded by saying that the books won’t be much value if you are good at internet search, but they can be useful to people who aren’t good at searching or have limited access to the internet.

“My goal isn’t to have the computer write sentences, but to do the repetitive tasks that are too costly to do otherwise.”

The video below is a more comprehensive overview of Professor Parker’s algorithms.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.