Let inspiration be your compass...!

Were you ever, when taking a bath, suddenly struck by the insight that the upward force on your body by the surrounding water is equal to the weight of the water displaced by your body? It’s a matter of balance between the displaced weight and the induced upward force. It inspired Archimedes to his law of up-thrust.

Were you ever, when taking a nap, suddenly awaken by the fall of an apple on your head, and came to realize that you were hit by the force of gravity? The same gravity holds the moon into orbit, and, less distant, our airplanes. This was also a matter of balance, which inspired Newton to his famous laws of gravity.

And did you ever look at a pocket compass and wondered what it was in the surrounding empty space that was moving the needle? Where do you go to when there is nothing surrounding you? This wonder inspired Einstein to his theories of relativity and gravitation.All these great men were inspired by Mother Nature to represent the real world by simple models. Their inspiration made it possible to eventually fly in planes, and, more down to earth, for me to make my living at an airline. Where would we be without up-thrust, gravity and compasses?My own living consists of making much more humble models of real world problems. Not by bathing or sleeping, but through hard work of labour. I make models such as for forecasting the arrival and departure punctuality of new airline schedules, to predict which runways will be used tomorrow based on today’s weather forecast, to know almost for certain which passengers we want to transport to where for the best price possible.

I have a background in mathematics and econometrics which taught me to apply such principles as those of Archimedes, Newton and Einstein. But just theory is of course not enough. I develop my models in a variety of ways, such as Excel sheets, web applications, mainframe macros and C++ lines of code. That’s the technical part. My greatest challenge is however to have a proper link with our real world operations, my own Mother Nature: how do I know that I am modelling the essence of the problem, and how do I convince people that my models do indeed model their operations?It all comes down (that’s the gravity part again) to having simple ideas which can explain the toughest problems. But where do we get these simple ideas from? Well, they come from your own imagination..! It’s a matter of balancing between bathing and sleeping on the one side and working on the other side, balancing between theory and practice. Triggering your imagination is what inspiration is about. It gets us moving "fast forward" at almost the speed of light. Let inspiration be your compass...!