This book represents a departure from existing textbooks. Rather than covering methodology, the book introduces decision support systems through real world applications, and uses spreadsheets to model and solve problems. It uses management science techniques (statistics, simulation, probabilistic modeling and optimization), but only as tools to facilitate problem solving. The book embraces George Dantzig's dictum as its premise: "The final test of any theory is its capacity to solve the problems which originated it."
The book is used in the core MBA program at MIT's Sloan School of Management for the class titled: "Data, Models and Decisions". It is used in over ten universities in both core and elective classes, including Stanford University, Chicago's graduate school of Business, Babson College, among several others.
The book contains many real business cases from the authors' consulting experience. Instructor resources are available for faculty who have adopted the book for their course by contacting the authors directly @ dbertsim@mit.edu, rfreund@mit.edu )
