📈 #58 The three wise men are coming!

The magic of three kings day meets Operations Research

Jan 05, 2025

You may not know it, but the 3 wise men are coming tonight!

I love Christmas. I love the thrill in children’s eyes when Melchor, Gaspar, and Baltasar arrive on camels with presents, as it happened to me for 8-9 years.

They bring gifts for the newborn Jesus: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

All children have their favorite wise man, and mine was -and is- Baltasar. He’s so unique! Not because of his skin color, but because he carried myrrh.

I look for its definition every year. That’s part of the magic.

If you want the 3 wise men to give you presents, you need to write them a letter.

Here’s my open letter to them this year:

🪙 To Melchor, who carries the gold
🕯️ To Gaspar, who carries the frankincense
🤴🏿 To Baltasar, my favorite, carrying the myrrh

I’m seeking sponsors for Feasible that align with my values and your interests. If your company or a known one could benefit, let me know by replying to this email!

Before going into the post… I’d love some 🔄 feedback to improve Feasible. If you have 87 seconds to fill this form, it’d be great hearing from you.
Take me to the feedback

Let’s see what they bring to Feasible this year… 🪂

🪙 To Melchor, who carries the gold

Gold shines, as AI Agents do now.

You’ve seen a similar image categorizing AI Agents by their focus:

The growth of AI agents in the AI Agents Directory, from 258 to over 700, is impressive and indicates rapid advancements in this field.

Everyone is talking about them, and I’d love to test them in different scenarios:

💡 As researchers for new posts about OR for Feasible
🧠 As senior OR developers, we’re helping to write better models and algorithms for solving optimization problems
📝 As critics summarizing Operations Research papers, I even have a name for this tool for proposing improvements to methodologies, data, algorithms, or any other part

I’ll start soon with them and update you whenever I take a new step.

I’ve seen CrewAI as a good framework. Do you have specific suggestions? What topics should be covered?

🕯️ To Gaspar, who carries the frankincense

The rapid growth of AI agents is impressive, but it raises questions about the priorities and focus of the AI community.

One area getting a lot of attention is the ability of these AI agents to excel at mathematical and logical reasoning tasks.

When a new LLM enters the market, they highlight...

It can beat <another LLM, usually ChatGPT or Claude> on math questions.

There are more benchmarks for logical reasoning and math problems, constantly updated to make them harder to solve.

Why is this happening? Why are they obsessed with this topic? Are maths the ultimate frontier in AI?

First, I need to synthesize everything to avoid a lengthy novel. Then, I’ll write about it. It’ll be my vision around its implications in OR.

🤴🏿 To Baltasar, my favorite, carrying the myrrh

As I explore ways to improve Operations Research, I wonder how AI advancements could enhance our approach to optimization problems.

This leads me to request the Wise Man who carries the myrrh, Baltasar.

I’ve been thinking about improving the OR field.

You have several posts like these five:

OR reimagined (Part I)
OR reimagined (Part II): commoditization
OR reimagined (Part III): mindset
OR reimagined (Part IV): marketing
OR reimagined (Part V): practicality

I need to write the last part to assess how to change the negative cycle into a positive one. I will do it soon.

I created two challenges in 2024, the last an Advent of Operations Research with 125 participants.

For 2025, I ask Baltasar for the strength and fuel to change how we learn OR. I started that mission with my free 7-day email course, OR From 0 to 1, and I’d like to give more to the field.

What topic should new competitions, challenges, or courses cover?

🍰 Cheers to 2025!

Tomorrow we’ll eat a traditional Roscón de Reyes with our families. It’s a tradition we can’t break!

I hope my wishes come true so I can discuss AI agents in the OR space, the importance of math in AI, and challenges or courses to improve optimization problem-solving.

Until then…

Let’s keep optimizing,

Borja.