Here is a roundup of Halloween related reading I’ve been doing.
- What Vampire Graves Tell Us About Ancient Superstitions from The Atlantic.
- Where did the fear of poisoned Halloween candy come from? from the Smithsonian.
- I found a blog post that addresses how young children may be attempting to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) when planning for trick or treating.
- I couldn’t find other connections between the Halloween and the TSP. I found a horror short story collection that includes a story about a traveling salesman. The story is called “How I Killed the Drama” by Mike Robinson. It is described as “A traveling salesman, staying overnight in an out-of-the-way hotel, stumbles upon the astonishing secret of humankind’s every teardrop and every turmoil, and resolves to take advantage.” I bet he veers from his shortest path, which indeed sounds quite horrifying!
- Zombie Fever: A Mathematician Studies a Pop Culture Epidemic. A scientific American blog post by Evelyn Lamb.
- I could find any OR/MS related jack-o-lanterns. There are plenty of nerdy jack-o-lanterns out there (where “nerdy” = SciFi).
- I love this pumpkin carved by laser (pictured below). I also included a youtube video of the laser carving process.
Please share any OR/MS related Halloween stories that you’ve come across.
Pumpkin carved by laser.
Here are a few old posts that relate to Halloween:
university offers zombie apocalypse course to teach students survival skills
find the size of a zombie population during a zombie attack
interview with an undergraduate researcher (we discuss horror movies in the podcast)
pumpkin patches and queuing theory
how to (optimally) prepare for a zombie outbreak
on vampires and operations research
Punk Rock Operations Research 
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