Beschreibung:
<jats:p> The following “misapplication” occurred in a project in which I was involved some 40 years ago. I want to tell about it now not only because of its intrinsic interest, but also because it illustrates how much the world has changed in these 40 years. At that time hardly anybody had heard the words operations research or management science (or systems engineering or systems analysis), and very few of the people working on this project had. More importantly, almost nobody understood certain ways of looking at the world, and in particular looking at problems, that now seem perfectly obvious to all of us. </jats:p><jats:p> After World War II, the newly formed US Air Force decided to worry about a gadget that had been called the V-2 during World War II and was then called the ballistic missile. </jats:p>