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Applying math to sales
These days, Dietrich's 160-member team is, in fact, venturing out from years of behind-the-scenes, mostly theoretical search to tackle an impressive array of real-world issues at IBM and beyond. On Target, sales-prediction soft-ware that grew out of the departments math research, generated $100 million in new revenue as pilot program. Last year, it delivered about $500 million in worldwide use. So do the math: Add in savings from the staffing analysis tool, and that's a $1 billion contribution by Dietrich's math whizzes to IBM'S revenue.

Math in a changing world
IBM's math science department's growing impact reflects a bigger real-world shift. A generation ago, businesses might call on mathematicians to optimize production lines and maybe to support pricing decisions. Today, companies measure nearly every aspect of what they do, and computers are fast enough to crunch the members in time for execs to act on the analysis. In the hands of talented mathematicians, data create an invaluable advantage. Entire companies-think Google-are being built almost entirely around math. And others, like IBM, are integrating math into operations and decision-making in ways never before seen. "It's a great time," Dietrich says, "to be a computational mathematician."

Assessing teamwork
The mathematicians are tackling another problem whose solution could be just as valuable: how to pick the best teams. Project managers tend to select the most talented developers and engineers available, or the ones they already know. That may work well for the project at hand, but in the long run, it doesn't necessarily benefit IBM as a whole: better to spread the talent around. Researchers are also creating a social-networking analysis that would assess trails of email, instant messaging and phone calls to identify which teams operate as flat organizations and which ones are hierarchical, and who works well together and who doesn't.

Vocabulary Focus

Tackle (v)---To try to deal with something

Array (n)---A large number of different things

Optimize (v)---To make something as good as possible

Hierarchical (adj) ---Relating to a system in which people or things are arranged according to their importance

Specialized Terms

Pilot program (n phr) ---系统试行期A trial period of a system used to detect and correct flaws or to determine suitability

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