Data Envelopment Analysis with Maple 13
Wm C Bauldry
Boone, NC
BauldryWC@appstate.edu

We will present the ``Data Envelopment Analysis'' (DEA) technique using
Maple 13.  DEA is an operations research tool that uses the simplex algorithm
to evaluate the relative efficiency of `decision- making units' (DMU's) in
an organization.  We will illustrate DEA by applying the method to analyze
the 16 departments of the College of Arts & Sciences at Appalachian State
University.  Computer algebra is best at easily handling the large scale
computations intrinsic to DEA studies.  The College of Arts & Sciences
DEA analysis, a simplified example, requires 16 simplex optimizations
each over 16 variables with 3 constraints.  A significant DEA study would
likely involve 30 or more simplex optimizations with a much larger number
of variables and of constraints for each run.  The original Input-Output
ratio form of DEA is nonlinear and is quite difficult to compute; Maple
makes it feasible to attempt.