Practical Optimization: A Gentle Introduction

This book is designed as a one-term introduction to the most important topics in applied optimization. It is impossible to cover all of optimization in a one-term course: there are entire yearlong courses on each of the individual topics that we will cover! This book provides a fairly broad survey at a medium depth. There are numerous topics that you should be aware of, but which cannot be covered in an introductory book like this one: brief sketches of these topics appear throughout the book.

The main goals of a course using this book should be to equip students to:

1. recognize problems that can be tackled using the tools of applied optimization,
2. formulate optimization problems correctly and appropriately,
3. solve optimization problems, primarily by selecting and applying the correct solvers, but also possibly by writing special software or hiring experts.

These abilities will be an excellent addition to your skills toolkit, and especially useful as the world becomes more complex and computer-centric. Note that a course in optimization or operations research is required in most MBA courses, in business, industrial engineering (and many other engineering programs), and economics. Such courses are usually a recommended option in computer science as well. These courses are included in all those programs precisely because the material finds so many practical applications.

Author : John W. Chinneck, Systems and Computer Engineering, Carleton University
Publication Date : November 2007

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