
Football This Fall? U of I Professor Weighs In
Dr. Sheldon Jacobson, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois, has been evaluating CDC data, and explains how COVID-19 could spread if college football season resumes this fall.
BALTIMORE, MD, April 1, 2025 – Can we really trust AI to make better decisions than humans? A new study says … not always. Researchers have discovered that OpenAI’s ChatGPT, one of the most advanced and popular AI models, makes the same kinds of decision-making mistakes as humans in some situations – showing biases like overconfidence of hot-hand (gambler’s) fallacy – yet acting inhuman in others (e.g., not suffering from base-rate neglect or sunk cost fallacies).
You are swimming in an ocean of data and don’t even realize it. All around you are invisible amounts of data that would be staggering to try to comprehend. Thousands of smartphones and smart devices are talking to, sending and downloading vast amounts of data, video, audio, words, numbers, images, you name it. Everything from the latest movie on Netflix to someone’s radiology results from a cancer screening.
Mom-and-pop businesses are trying to adapt to the soaring cost of eggs. The owners of four egg-centric restaurants across the country show how they are coping with this threat to their livelihoods.
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Dr. Sheldon Jacobson, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois, has been evaluating CDC data, and explains how COVID-19 could spread if college football season resumes this fall.
As governors relaxed stay-at-home orders and people ventured out in recent days, the number of new reported cases of COVID-19 has surged again, reaching a single-day record on Sunday, according to the World Health Organization. Between Jan. 20 and July 1 of this year there have been 2,573,393 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 126,573 deaths in the U.S., according to WHO data.
Should a college football season take place, one Big Ten professor expects tragedy. Dr. Sheldon Jacobson, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois, told CBS Sports that if the roughly 13,000 FBS players return to their respective campuses as scheduled, he projects that 30 to 50 percent of players will contract COVID-19 this season – and three to seven players will die.
On June 30, 21,416 COVID-19 tests were performed in the state of Connecticut. Only 152 came back positive. This represented a remarkable turnaround for a state that regularly saw more than 1,000 new cases a day in April. We asked Prof. Edward Kaplan, an operations and modeling expert who has extensively studied the spread of the disease in the state, what Connecticut has gotten right—and what risks still remain.
The coronavirus pandemic appears to be receding, public officials have proudly announced entry into a phased reopening. Observing the death and physical suffering the illness has brought to so many, little needs to be said to prove the seriousness of the threat that COVID-19 poses. Nor is there doubt that by nearly all accounts the draconian lockdown measures deserve the lion’s share of credit for slowing its initial wildfire spread. Yet, in many areas, where close to two months without significant spread have renewed many people’s comfort in resuming regular activities, many are prepared to move beyond curbside pickup and gatherings at a six-foot distance.
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