Dr John Preater

Title: Senior Lecturer in Operational Research
Phone: 01782 734779
Email:
Location: MacKay Building Room 2.35
Role:
Contacting me:

I obtained my Bachelor's degree in Statistics and Operational Research, together with an MSc in Statistics, at Manchester.

Before joining the lecturing staff of the Mathematics department at Keele in 1987, I worked for several years in mathematical modelling at a consultancy involved in operational analysis and reliability.

In my early years at Keele I completed a part-time PhD in stochastic dynamic programming. Since then I have developed a personal research program with a stochastic flavour. I am a problem solver rather than a systematic theory developer.

In teaching, I have delivered and designed a wide spectrum of lecture courses up to Masters level in operational research, probability and pure mathematics. I have also fulfilled many administrative roles in Mathematics.

I enjoy reading Victorian novels, listening to instrumental Baroque and earlier music, and, being a committed Christian, am busy in my church.

My research interests lie in applied probability and stochastic operational research.

For many years I have studied decision-making problems that involve the selection of objects from a random sequence. The aim is to understand the properties of optimal and heuristic policies for choosing one or more objects, given that future object qualities are unknown to the selector. I have focused my attention on variants involving either multiple selection, or single selection with partially ordered object qualities.

One version of these sequential selection problems, in which each procured object leaves after a random time, is a model for personnel recruitment and retention. This model led to the study of infinite server queueing systems. Here I have studied fine congestion details of the standard M/M/. model as well as the behaviour of extended models in which either the customers or the servers are ranked.

Traditionally such systems have been used to represent emergency medical facilities, and I have also been involved in some applied studies of health service queues.

For a number of years, in collaboration with a former Keele geologist, I have been engaged in creating simulation software for modelling hydrocarbon reservoirs.

In addition to this regular research work, I have dealt with numerous consultation questions. These include: speech recognition, floating spiders, bus timetabling, political gerrymandering and cutting stock.

Selected Publications

  • Preater J. 2009. A species of voter model driven by immigration. STATISTICS & PROBABILITY LETTERS, vol. 79(20), 2131-2137. link> doi>
  • Preater J. 2006. On-line selection of an acceptable pair. JOURNAL OF APPLIED PROBABILITY, vol. 43(3), 729-740. link> doi>
  • Preater J. 2002. On the severity of M/M/$inf$ congested episodes. Journal of Applied Probability. doi>
  • Preater J. 2002. An emergency facility with minimal admission. Probability in the Engineering and Informational Sciences.
  • Preater J. 2002. Queues in health. Health Care Management Science.

Full Publications List show

Journal Articles

  • Preater J. 2009. A species of voter model driven by immigration. STATISTICS & PROBABILITY LETTERS, vol. 79(20), 2131-2137. link> doi>
  • Preater J. 2006. On-line selection of an acceptable pair. JOURNAL OF APPLIED PROBABILITY, vol. 43(3), 729-740. link> doi>
  • Preater J. 2002. On the severity of M/M/$inf$ congested episodes. Journal of Applied Probability. doi>
  • Preater J. 2002. An emergency facility with minimal admission. Probability in the Engineering and Informational Sciences.
  • Preater J. 2002. Queues in health. Health Care Management Science.
  • Ndlovu P and Preater J. 2001. Calibration using a piecewise simple linear regression model. Communications in Statistics: Theory and Methods, vol. 30(2), 229-242. doi>
  • Preater J. 2000. Sequential selection with a better-than-average rule. STATISTICS & PROBABILITY LETTERS, vol. 50(2), 187-191. link> doi>
  • Preater J. 1999. The best-choice problem for partially ordered objects. OPERATIONS RESEARCH LETTERS, vol. 25(4), 187-190. link> doi>
  • Gibbens RJ, Whittle P, Ansell P, Bather J, Collins EJ, Gittins J, Zervos M, Bauerle N, Birge JR, Frostig E, Weiss G, McDiarmid C, Mohring RH, Uetz M, Schulz AS, Owen RW, Gregorio-Dominguez MM, Preater J, Rieder U, Stidham S, Thomas L, Yao DD. 1999. The achievable region approach to the optimal control of stochastic systems - Discussion. JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL STATISTICAL SOCIETY SERIES B-STATISTICAL METHODOLOGY, vol. 61, 776-791. link>
  • Preater J. 1997. M/M/infinity transience revisited. JOURNAL OF APPLIED PROBABILITY, vol. 34(4), 1061-1067. link> doi>
  • Preater J. 1997. A perpetuity and the M/M/infinity ranked server system. JOURNAL OF APPLIED PROBABILITY, vol. 34(2), 508-513. link> doi>
  • PREATER J. 1995. A PASSAGE TIME FOR GREEDY-COLORING CYCLES. RANDOM STRUCTURES & ALGORITHMS, vol. 6(1), 105-111. link> doi>
  • PREATER J. 1994. ON MULTIPLE-CHOICE SECRETARY PROBLEMS. MATHEMATICS OF OPERATIONS RESEARCH, vol. 19(3), 597-602. link> doi>
  • PREATER J. 1993. THE SENIOR AND JUNIOR SECRETARIES PROBLEM. OPERATIONS RESEARCH LETTERS, vol. 14(4), 231-235. link> doi>
  • PREATER J. 1993. A NOTE ON MONOTONICITY IN OPTIMAL MULTIPLE STOPPING PROBLEMS. STATISTICS & PROBABILITY LETTERS, vol. 16(5), 407-410. link> doi>
  • PREATER J. 1986. THE TREATMENT OF RANDOMNESS IN DEFENSE MODELING. JOURNAL OF THE OPERATIONAL RESEARCH SOCIETY, vol. 37(12), 1168. link>

Other

  • Preater J. 2001. A bibliography of queues in health and medicine.
  • Preater J. 2001. A minimal admission M/M/$inf$ system.

MAT-10041: Algebra II
MAT-20024: Operational Research
MAT-30026: Probability Models