Question 1

Johnny Chew recently accepted an offer from SUSS Business School to major in Business Analytics. He is now planning his course schedule for the upcoming academic year. The academic year at SUSS is divided into two semesters, and Johnny has a wide range of courses to choose from. He has shortlisted twenty potential courses that align with his interests and are beneficial for future job skills. His interest in each course is rated on a scale of 3 to 5, while the relevance to job skills is rated between 1 and 10, as indicated in the fifth and sixth columns of Table 1.

Johnny is allowed to take at most five courses in each semester. In determining his course schedule, Johnny needs to consider the following:

• Johnny can only take a course if he has completed or is concurrently taking all courses that are prerequisites for the course. The prerequisites for all twenty courses are shown in the fourth column of Table 1.

• In the upcoming Jan semester, Johnny must take at least three of the following five courses: Quantitative Methods (course 1), Business Application & Modeling (course 2), Economic Theory (course 3), Data Mining I (course 6), and Business Communications (course 20)

• If Johnny takes Text Mining (course 8), he will not be allowed to take Natural Language Processing (course 14), because these two courses cover fairly similar contents.

• Johnny would like to take at least one course in Digital Marketing (course 12 and/ or 13) and at least one course in Supply Chain Management (course 10 and/ or 11).

Question 1a

Suppose that Johnny’s overall objective is to maximize his total interest level. Formulate a discrete optimization model that can be used to determine Johnny’s optimal course schedule.
You answer should include the following:
• Determine the objective of the proposed model;
• Define the necessary decision variables;
• List all the constraints and give the explanation.

Question 1b

Construct a spreadsheet model for your formulated optimization model in Q1(a) using the Excel solver to solve the optimal solutions. (Present the screenshots of the spreadsheet model and solution as part of your answer.)

Question 1c

Try to amend your model in order to generate a different solution with the same(optimal) objective value as in Q1(b).
• What is the other optimal course schedule?
• Based in the given context, which solution should Johnny use? Justify your answer.

Question 1d

While selecting courses based solely on interest levels might seem ideal, it’s often crucial to also consider the relevance of the skills gained for future job prospects. Balancing multiple objectives, such as personal interests and the acquisition of job-relevant skills, is a more realistic and pragmatic approach. In reality, people often employ various methods to incorporate and balance these multiple objectives. This discussion invites you to propose two distinct methods commonly used for integrating multiple objectives in course selection. Additionally, please describe the necessary steps and considerations for effectively evaluating this multifaceted decision-making process.