Potential Function Methods For Approximately Solving Linear Programming Problems breaks new ground in linear programming theory. The book draws on the research developments in three broad areas: linear and integer programming, numerical analysis, and the computational architectures which enable speedy, high-level algorithm design. During the last ten years, a new body of research within the field of optimization research has emerged, which seeks to develop good approximation algorithms for classes of linear programming problems. This work both has roots in fundamental areas of mathematical programming and is also framed in the context of the modern theory of algorithms. The result of this work, in which Daniel Bienstock has been very much involved, has been a family of algorithms with solid theoretical foundations and with growing experimental success. This book will examine these algorithms, starting with some of the very earliest examples, and through the latest theoretical and computational developments.

Semi-infinite optimization is a vivid field of active research. Recently semi infinite optimization in a general form has attracted a lot of attention, not only because of its surprising structural aspects, but also due to the large number of applications which can be formulated as general semi-infinite programs. The aim of this book is to highlight structural aspects of general semi-infinite programming, to formulate optimality conditions which take this structure into account, and to give a conceptually new solution method. In fact, under certain assumptions general semi-infinite programs can be solved efficiently when their bi-Ievel structure is exploited appropriately. After a brief introduction with some historical background in Chapter 1 we be gin our presentation by a motivation for the appearance of standard and general semi-infinite optimization problems in applications. Chapter 2 lists a number of problems from engineering and economics which give rise to semi-infinite models, including (reverse) Chebyshev approximation, minimax problems, ro bust optimization, design centering, defect minimization problems for operator equations, and disjunctive programming."

Complementarity theory is a new domain in applied mathematics and is concerned with the study of complementarity problems. These problems represent a wide class of mathematical models related to optimization, game theory, economic engineering, mechanics, fluid mechanics, stochastic optimal control etc. The book is dedicated to the study of nonlinear complementarity problems by topological methods. Audience: Mathematicians, engineers, economists, specialists working in operations research and anybody interested in applied mathematics or in mathematical modeling.

Most books about global optimization describe the theory of thealgorithms, whereas a given implementation's quality never dependsexclusively on the theoretical soundness of the algorithms that areimplemented. The literature rarely discusses the tuning of algorithmicparameters, implementation tricks, software architectures, and theembedding of local solvers within global solvers. And yet, there aremany good software implementations out there from which the entirecommunity could learn something. The scope of this book is moving afew steps toward the systematization of the path that goes from theinvention to the implementation and testing of a global optimizationalgorithm.

Linear Programming provides an in-depth look at simplex based as well as the more recent interior point techniques for solving linear programming problems. Starting with a review of the mathematical underpinnings of these approaches, the text provides details of the primal and dual simplex methods with the primal-dual, composite, and steepest edge simplex algorithms. This then is followed by a discussion of interior point techniques, including projective and affine potential reduction, primal and dual affine scaling, and path following algorithms. Also covered is the theory and solution of the linear complementarity problem using both the complementary pivot algorithm and interior point routines. A feature of the book is its early and extensive development and use of duality theory. Audience: The book is written for students in the areas of mathematics, economics, engineering and management science, and professionals who need a sound foundation in the important and dynamic discipline of linear programming.

Algorithmic discrete mathematics plays a key role in the development of information and communication technologies, and methods that arise in computer science, mathematics and operations research in particular in algorithms, computational complexity, distributed computing and optimization are vital to modern services such as mobile telephony, online banking and VoIP.

This book examines communication networking from a mathematical viewpoint. The contributing authors took part in the European COST action 293 a four-year program of multidisciplinary research on this subject. In this book they offer introductory overviews and state-of-the-art assessments of current and future research in the fields of broadband, optical, wireless and ad hoc networks. Particular topics of interest are design, optimization, robustness and energy consumption.

The book will be of interest to graduate students, researchers and practitioners in the areas of networking, theoretical computer science, operations research, distributed computing and mathematics."

Continuous-time Markov decision processes (MDPs), also known as controlled Markov chains, are used for modeling decision-making problems that arise in operations research (for instance, inventory, manufacturing, and queueing systems), computer science, communications engineering, control of populations (such as fisheries and epidemics), and management science, among many other fields. This volume provides a unified, systematic, self-contained presentation of recent developments on the theory and applications of continuous-time MDPs. The MDPs in this volume include most of the cases that arise in applications, because they allow unbounded transition and reward/cost rates. Much of the material appears for the first time in book form.

Nonconvex Optimization is a multi-disciplinary research field that deals with the characterization and computation of local/global minima/maxima of nonlinear, nonconvex, nonsmooth, discrete and continuous functions. Nonconvex optimization problems are frequently encountered in modeling real world systems for a very broad range of applications including engineering, mathematical economics, management science, financial engineering, and social science. This contributed volume consists of selected contributions from the Advanced Training Programme on Nonconvex Optimization and Its Applications held at Banaras Hindu University in March 2009. It aims to bring together new concepts, theoretical developments, and applications from these researchers. Both theoretical and applied articles are contained in this volume which adds to the state of the art research in this field. Topics in Nonconvex Optimization is suitable for advanced graduate students and researchers in this area.

The customer orientation philosophy of modern business organizations and the implementation of the main principles of continuous improvement, justifies the importance of evaluating and analyzing cust omer satisfaction. In fact, customer satisfaction isconsidere d today as a baseline standard of performance and a possi ble standardo f excellence forany business organization. Extensive research has defined several alternative approaches, which examine the customer satisfaction evaluation prob lem from very different perspectives. These approaches include simple quantitative tools, statistical and data analysis techniques, consumer behavioral models, etc. and adopt the following main prin ciples: * The data of the problem are based on th e customers' judgments and are directly collected from them. * This is a multivariate evaluation problem given that customer's overall satisfac tion depends on a setof variables representing product/service characteristic dimensions. * Usually, an additive formula is used in order to aggregate partial evaluations in ano verall satisfaction measure. Many of the aforementioned approaches don ot consider the qualitative form of customers' judgments, although this information constitutes the main satisfaction input data. Furthermore, insev eral cases , the measurements are not sufficient enough to analyze in detail customer sa tisfaction because models' results are mainly focused on a simple descriptive analysis.

The first comprehensive account of the theory of mass transportation problems and its applications. In Volume I, the authors systematically develop the theory with emphasis on the Monge-Kantorovich mass transportation and the Kantorovich-Rubinstein mass transshipment problems. They then discuss a variety of different approaches towards solving these problems and exploit the rich interrelations to several mathematical sciences - from functional analysis to probability theory and mathematical economics. The second volume is devoted to applications of the above problems to topics in applied probability, theory of moments and distributions with given marginals, queuing theory, risk theory of probability metrics and its applications to various fields, among them general limit theorems for Gaussian and non-Gaussian limiting laws, stochastic differential equations and algorithms, and rounding problems. Useful to graduates and researchers in theoretical and applied probability, operations research, computer science, and mathematical economics, the prerequisites for this book are graduate level probability theory and real and functional analysis.

Classical probability theory provides information about random walks after a fixed number of steps. For applications, however, it is more natural to consider random walks evaluated after a random number of steps. Examples are sequential analysis, queuing theory, storage and inventory theory, insurance risk theory, reliability theory, and the theory of contours. Stopped Random Walks: Limit Theorems and Applications shows how this theory can be used to prove limit theorems for renewal counting processes, first passage time processes, and certain two-dimenstional random walks, and to how these results are useful in various applications.

This second edition offers updated content and an outlook on further results, extensions and generalizations. A new chapter examines nonlinear renewal processes in order to present the analagous theory for perturbed random walks, modeled as a random walk plus "noise."

This addition to the ISOR series introduces complementarity models in a straightforward and approachable manner and uses them to carry out an in-depth analysis of energy markets, including formulation issues and solution techniques. In a nutshell, complementarity models generalize: a. optimization problems via their Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions b. on-cooperative games in which each player may be solving a separate but related optimization problem with potentially overall system constraints (e.g., market-clearing conditions) c. conomic and engineering problems that aren't specifically derived from optimization problems (e.g., spatial price equilibria) d. roblems in which both primal and dual variables (prices) appear in the original formulation (e.g., The National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) or its precursor, PIES). As such, complementarity models are a very general and flexible modeling format. A natural question is why concentrate on energy markets for this complementarity approach? s it turns out, energy or other markets that have game theoretic aspects are best modeled by complementarity problems. The reason is that the traditional perfect competition approach no longer applies due to deregulation and restructuring of these markets and thus the corresponding optimization problems may no longer hold. Also, in some instances it is important in the original model formulation to involve both primal variables (e.g., production) as well as dual variables (e.g., market prices) for public and private sector energy planning. Traditional optimization problems can not directly handle this mixing of primal and dual variables but complementarity models can and this makes them all that more effective for decision-makers.

Linear Programming (LP) is perhaps the most frequently used optimization technique. One of the reasons for its wide use is that very powerful solution algorithms exist for linear optimization. Computer programs based on either the simplex or interior point methods are capable of solving very large-scale problems with high reliability and within reasonable time. Model builders are aware of this and often try to formulate real-life problems within this framework to ensure they can be solved efficiently. It is also true that many real-life optimization problems can be formulated as truly linear models and also many others can well be approximated by linearization. The two main methods for solving LP problems are the variants of the simplex method and the interior point methods (IPMs). It turns out that both variants have their role in solving different problems. It has been recognized that, since the introduction of the IPMs, the efficiency of simplex based solvers has increased by two orders of magnitude. This increased efficiency can be attributed to the following: (1) theoretical developments in the underlying algorithms, (2) inclusion of results of computer science, (3) using the principles of software engineering, and (4) taking into account the state-of-the-art in computer technology.
Theoretically correct algorithms can be implemented in many different ways, but the performance is dependent on how the implementation is done. The success is based on the proper synthesis of the above mentioned (1-4) components. Computational Techniques of the Simplex Method is a systematic treatment focused on the computational issues of the simplex method. It provides a comprehensive coverage of the most important and successful algorithmic and implementation techniques of the simplex method. It is a unique source of essential, never discussed details of algorithmic elements and their implementation. On the basis of the book the reader will be able to create a highly advanced implementation of the simplex method which, in turn, can be used directly or as a building block in other solution algorithms.

This book offers a comprehensive treatment of linear programming as well as of the optimization of linear functions over polyhedra in finite dimensional Euclidean vector spaces. An introduction surveying fifty years of linear optimization is given. The book can serve both as a graduate textbook for linear programming and as a text for advanced topics classes or seminars. Exercises as well as several case studies are included. The book is based on the author's long term experience in teaching and research. For his research work he has received, among other honors, the 1983 Lanchester Prize of the Operations Research Society of America, the 1985 Dantzig Prize of the Mathematical Programming Society and the Society for Industrial Applied Mathematics and a 1989 Alexander-von-Humboldt Senior U.S. Scientist Research Award.

Encompassing all the major topics students will encounter in courses on the subject, the authors teach both the underlying mathematical foundations and how these ideas are implemented in practice. They illustrate all the concepts with both worked examples and plenty of exercises, and, in addition, provide software so that students can try out numerical methods and so hone their skills in interpreting the results. As a result, this will make an ideal textbook for all those coming to the subject for the first time. Authors' note: A problem recently found with the software is due to a bug in Formula One, the third party commercial software package that was used for the development of the interface. It occurs when the date, currency, etc. format is set to a non-United States version. Please try setting your computer date/currency option to the United States option . The new version of Formula One, when ready, will be posted on WWW.

Mathematical elegance is a constant theme in this treatment of linear programming and matrix games. Condensed tableau, minimal in size and notation, are employed for the simplex algorithm. In the context of these tableau the beautiful termination theorem of R.G. Bland is proven more simply than heretofore, and the important duality theorem becomes almost obvious. Examples and extensive discussions throughout the book provide insight into definitions, theorems, and applications. There is considerable informal discussion on how best to play matrix games. The book is designed for a one-semester undergraduate course. Readers will need a degree of mathematical sophistication and general tools such as sets, functions, and summation notation. No single college course is a prerequisite, but most students will do better with some prior college mathematics. This thorough introduction to linear programming and game theory will impart a deep understanding of the material and also increase the student's mathematical maturity.

This book gives a gentle but up-to-date introduction into the theory of operator semigroups (or linear dynamical systems), which can be used with great success to describe the dynamics of complicated phenomena arising in many applications. Positivity is a property which naturally appears in physical, chemical, biological or economic processes. It adds a beautiful and far reaching mathematical structure to the dynamical systems and operators describing these processes. In the first part, the finite dimensional theory in a coordinate-free way is developed, which is difficult to find in literature. This is a good opportunity to present the main ideas of the Perron-Frobenius theory in a way which can be used in the infinite dimensional situation. Applications to graph matrices, age structured population models and economic models are discussed. The infinite dimensional theory of positive operator semigroups with their spectral and asymptotic theory is developed in the second part. Recent applications illustrate the theory, like population equations, neutron transport theory, delay equations or flows in networks. Each chapter is accompanied by a large set of exercises. An up-to-date bibliography and a detailed subject index help the interested reader. The book is intended primarily for graduate and master students. The finite dimensional part, however, can be followed by an advanced bachelor with a solid knowledge of linear algebra and calculus.

The effectiveness of the algorithms of linear programming in solving problems is largely dependent upon the particular applications from which these problems arise. A first course in linear programming should not only allow one to solve many different types of problems in many different contexts but should provide deeper insights into the fields in which linear programming finds its utility. To this end, the emphasis throughtout Linear Programming and Its Applications is on the acquisition of linear programming skills via the algorithmic solution of small-scale problems both in the general sense and in the specific applications where these problems naturally occur. The first part of the book deals with methods to solve general linear programming problems and discusses the theory of duality which connects these problems. The second part of the book deals with linear programming in different applications including the fields of game theory and graph theory as well as the more traditional transportation and assignment problems. The book is versatile; in as much as Linear Programming and Its Applications is intended to be used as a first course in linear programming, it is suitable for students in such varying fields as mathematics, computer science, engineering, actuarial science, and economics.

In Linear Programming: A Modern Integrated Analysis, both boundary (simplex) and interior point methods are derived from the complementary slackness theorem and, unlike most books, the duality theorem is derived from Farkas's Lemma, which is proved as a convex separation theorem. The tedium of the simplex method is thus avoided. A new and inductive proof of Kantorovich's Theorem is offered, related to the convergence of Newton's method. Of the boundary methods, the book presents the (revised) primal and the dual simplex methods. An extensive discussion is given of the primal, dual and primal-dual affine scaling methods. In addition, the proof of the convergence under degeneracy, a bounded variable variant, and a super-linearly convergent variant of the primal affine scaling method are covered in one chapter. Polynomial barrier or path-following homotopy methods, and the projective transformation method are also covered in the interior point chapter. Besides the popular sparse Cholesky factorization and the conjugate gradient method, new methods are presented in a separate chapter on implementation. These methods use LQ factorization and iterative techniques.

Control Theory for Linear Systems deals with the mathematical theory of feedback control of linear systems. It treats a wide range of control synthesis problems for linear state space systems with inputs and outputs. The book provides a treatment of these problems using state space methods, often with a geometric flavour. Its subject matter ranges from controllability and observability, stabilization, disturbance decoupling, and tracking and regulation, to linear quadratic regulation, H2 and H-infinity control, and robust stabilization. Each chapter of the book contains a series of exercises, intended to increase the reader's understanding of the material. Often, these exercises generalize and extend the material treated in the regular text.

FROM THE REVIEWS:
"...The book covers quite a broad range of material and gives the student a solid introduction to the field of systems and control theory ... I found this book to be well written and rigorous in its approach. It provides a good introduction to the mathematical theory of linear systems and control system design. I would recommend it as a good choice for a first-year graduate course covering these topics."
-IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATIC CONTROL

MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS
"...it is no small task to produce a book that presents the essential ingredients of the theory in a manner suitable for graduate students who are learning it for the first time. However, this is precisely the objective of the book under review and, in the opinion of this reviewer, the authors have succeeded admirably...Each chapter concludes with a set of exercises and historical notes and references. Also included in a fairly extensive bibliography with 232 references. These features and the lucid writing style of the authors make this book ideally suited for any graduate course in linear control theory aimed at students of applied mathematics or mathematically inclined students of engineering."

Praise for the Second Edition:

"This is quite a well-done book: very tightly organized, better-than-average exposition, and numerous examples, illustrations, and applications."
--Mathematical Reviews of the American Mathematical Society

An Introduction to Linear Programming and Game Theory, Third Edition presents a rigorous, yet accessible, introduction to the theoretical concepts and computational techniques of linear programming and game theory. Now with more extensive modeling exercises and detailed integer programming examples, this book uniquely illustrates how mathematics can be used in real-world applications in the social, life, and managerial sciences, providing readers with the opportunity to develop and apply their analytical abilities when solving realistic problems.

This Third Edition addresses various new topics and improvements in the field of mathematical programming, and it also presents two software programs, LP Assistant and the Solver add-in for Microsoft Office Excel(R), for solving linear programming problems. LP Assistant, developed by coauthor Gerard Keough, allows readers to perform the basic steps of the algorithms provided in the book and is freely available via the book's related Web site. The use of the sensitivity analysis report and integer programming algorithm from the Solver add-in for Microsoft Office Excel(R) is introduced so readers can solve the book's linear and integer programming problems. A detailed appendix contains instructions for the use of both applications.

Additional features of the Third Edition include:

A discussion of sensitivity analysis for the two-variable problem, along with new examples demonstrating integerprogramming, non-linear programming, and make vs. buy models

Revised proofs and a discussion on the relevance and solution of the dual problem

A section on developing an example in Data Envelopment Analysis

An outline of the proof of John Nash's theorem on the existence of equilibrium strategy pairs for non-cooperative, non-zero-sum games

Providing a complete mathematical development of all presented concepts and examples, Introduction to Linear Programming and Game Theory, Third Edition is an ideal text for linear programming and mathematical modeling courses at the upper-undergraduate and graduate levels. It also serves as a valuable reference for professionals who use game theory in business, economics, and management science.

Linear programming represents one of the major applications of mathematics to business, industry, and economics. It provides a methodology for optimizing an output given that is a linear function of a number of inputs. George Dantzig is widely regarded as the founder of the subject with his invention of the simplex algorithm in the 1940's. This second volume is intended to add to the theory of the items discussed in the first volume. It also includes additional advanced topics such as variants of the simplex method, interior point methods (early and current methods), GUB, decomposition, integer programming, and game theory. Graduate students in the fields of operations research, industrial engineering, and applied mathematics will find this volume of particular interest.

For a long time the techniques of solving linear optimization (LP) problems improved only marginally. Fifteen years ago, however, a revolutionary discovery changed everything. A new golden age' for optimization started, which is continuing up to the current time. What is the cause of the excitement? Techniques of linear programming formed previously an isolated body of knowledge. Then suddenly a tunnel was built linking it with a rich and promising land, part of which was already cultivated, part of which was completely unexplored. These revolutionary new techniques are now applied to solve conic linear problems. This makes it possible to model and solve large classes of essentially nonlinear optimization problems as efficiently as LP problems. This volume gives an overview of the latest developments of such High Performance Optimization Techniques'. The first part is a thorough treatment of interior point methods for semidefinite programming problems. The second part reviews today's most exciting research topics and results in the area of convex optimization. Audience: This volume is for graduate students and researchers who are interested in modern optimization techniques.

The 5th edition of this classic textbook covers the central concepts of practical optimization techniques, with an emphasis on methods that are both state-of-the-art and popular. One major insight is the connection between the purely analytical character of an optimization problem and the behavior of algorithms used to solve that problem. End-of-chapter exercises are provided for all chapters. The material is organized into three separate parts. Part I offers a self-contained introduction to linear programming. The presentation in this part is fairly conventional, covering the main elements of the underlying theory of linear programming, many of the most effective numerical algorithms, and many of its important special applications. Part II, which is independent of Part I, covers the theory of unconstrained optimization, including both derivations of the appropriate optimality conditions and an introduction to basic algorithms. This part of the book explores the general properties of algorithms and defines various notions of convergence. In turn, Part III extends the concepts developed in the second part to constrained optimization problems. Except for a few isolated sections, this part is also independent of Part I. As such, Parts II and III can easily be used without reading Part I and, in fact, the book has been used in this way at many universities. New to this edition are popular topics in data science and machine learning, such as the Markov Decision Process, Farkas' lemma, convergence speed analysis, duality theories and applications, various first-order methods, stochastic gradient method, mirror-descent method, Frank-Wolf method, ALM/ADMM method, interior trust-region method for non-convex optimization, distributionally robust optimization, online linear programming, semidefinite programming for sensor-network localization, and infeasibility detection for nonlinear optimization.