mathematics

Michel Bierlaire

Michel Bierlaire is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Michel Bierlaire rather than just read about it. In short: Michel Bierlaire (born 9 February 1967) is a Belgian-Swiss applied mathematician specialising in transportation systems. He is Professor of Operations Research at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and directs the university’s Transport and Mobility Laboratory.

Key takeaways

Michel Bierlaire belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Michel Bierlaire to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Michel Bierlaire from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Michel Bierlaire (born 9 February 1967) is a Belgian-Swiss applied mathematician specialising in transportation systems. He is Professor of Operations Research at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and directs the university’s Transport and Mobility Laboratory.

Education Bierlaire studied mathematics at the University of Namur, obtaining his PhD in 1996 for research on transportation-demand models supervised by Philippe Toint.

Career From 1995 to 1998 he was a research associate in the Intelligent Transportation Systems Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he co-developed DynaMIT, a real-time traffic-prediction tool. Bierlaire joined EPFL in 1998 as a senior scientist, became Associate Professor in 2006 and Full Professor in 2012. He founded the Transport and Mobility Laboratory in 2006 and directed EPFL’s Doctoral Program in Civil and Environmental Engineering from 2009 to 2017. In 2012 he co-founded the European Association for Research in Transportation (hEART) and served as its first president until 2015.

Research Bierlaire combines discrete-choice theory, operations research and simulation to analyse travel behaviour, design transport policies and evaluate environmental impacts. His methods have been applied to public-transport planning, logistics, pedestrian dynamics and land-use modelling. He leads Biogeme, an open-source Python package for maximum-likelihood estimation of discrete-choice models. Bierlaire created several massive open online courses, including “Introduction to Discrete Choice Models” on edX, and co-teaches the professional course “Discrete Choice Analysis: Predicting Individual Behaviour and Market Demand” with colleagues from MIT and UC Berkeley.

Honours and service Founding Editor-in-Chief, EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics (2011–2019) Associate Editor, Operations Research (since 2012)

Selected publications Bierlaire, M. Optimization: Principles and Algorithms. EPFL Press, 2015. Fosgerau, M.; McFadden, D.; Bierlaire, M. “Choice Probability Generating Functions.” Journal of Choice Modelling 8 (2013): 1–18. Bierlaire, M.; Chen, J.; Newman, J. “A Probabilistic Map Matching Method for Smartphone GPS Data.” Transportation Research Part C 26 (2013): 78–98.

References

External links Official website Michel Bierlaire publications indexed by Google Scholar

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Michel Bierlaire

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Michel Bierlaire claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Michel Bierlaire before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Michel Bierlaire ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Michel Bierlaire

In research: Michel Bierlaire appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Michel Bierlaire in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Michel Bierlaire is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1967 births, Academic staff of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Applied mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Michel Bierlaire outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Michel Bierlaire in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Michel Bierlaire means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Michel Bierlaire out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Michel Bierlaire in simple terms?

Why does Michel Bierlaire matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Michel Bierlaire?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Michel Bierlaire.