Most textbooks on modern heuristics provide the reader with detailed descriptions of the functionality of single examples like genetic algorithms, genetic programming, tabu search, simulated annealing, and others, but fail to teach the underlying concepts behind these different approaches.

The author takes a different approach in this textbook by focusing on the users' needs and answering three fundamental questions: First, he tells us which problems modern heuristics are expected to perform well on, and which should be left to traditional optimization methods. Second, he teaches us to systematically design the "right" modern heuristic for a particular problem by providing a coherent view on design elements and working principles. Third, he shows how we can make use of problem-specific knowledge for the design of efficient and effective modern heuristics that solve not only small toy problems but also perform well on large real-world problems.

This book is written in an easy-to-read style and it is aimed at students and practitioners in computer science, operations research and information systems who want to understand modern heuristics and are interested in a guide to their systematic design and use.

This book is written in an easy-to-read style and it is aimed at students and practitioners in computer science, operations research and information systems who want to understand modern heuristics and are interested in a guide to their systematic design and use.

This book is written in an easy-to-read style and it is aimed at students and practitioners in computer science, operations research and information systems who want to understand modern heuristics and are interested in a guide to their systematic design and use.

In today's confrontational and connected world, communication is the key strategic act. This book uses drama theory-a radical extension of game theory-to show how best to communicate so as to manage the emotionally charged confrontations occurring in any worthwhile relationship. Alongside a toolset that provides a systematic framework for analysing conflicts, drama theory explains why people need to listen to, and rely on, their feelings to help shake themselves out of fixed, unproductive positions and to find new ways of solving tough problems. This guide provides a sufficient grounding in the approach to enable you to apply it immediately for your own benefit and for the benefit of those with whom you work. A host of inspirational examples are included based upon actual situations in social and personal relations, business and organisational relations, defence and political management. These will give you an entirely fresh way of seeing how power is exercised in everyday interpersonal exchanges and a greater critical awareness of such factors as subtext and plotholes in public narratives. Using this approach you will be able to overcome the dilemmas of credibility and disbelief to build compelling messages that underpin your strategic intent. Moving beyond the vague platitudes of concepts like emotional intelligence, drama theory will also help you to avoid the pathologies that bedevil the process of managing conflicts and find ways of achieving authentic resolutions.

The series is designed to bring together those mathematicians who are seriously interested in getting new challenging stimuli from economic theories with those economists who are seeking effective mathematical tools for their research. A lot of economic problems can be formulated as constrained optimizations and equilibration of their solutions. Various mathematical theories have been supplying economists with indispensable machineries for these problems arising in economic theory. Conversely, mathematicians have been stimulated by various mathematical difficulties raised by economic theories.

What if life is a game? Are you winning? Have you even decided what 'winning' is? Game design could be defined in many ways, but here the term is used to denote the practice of creating choices. Designing a game, in this sense, involves crafting limits, rewards, incentives, and risks in such a way that the person who interacts with the game - the player - makes choices that have consequences. Edward Castronova urges readers to think about the fundamentals of the human condition and compare them to different games that we all know. In some ways, life is like an idle game: providing unchallenging distractions that fit easily into a person's daily routine. In other ways, life is like the game Minesweeper: You poke in different places to learn about what you don't know, taking care to avoid big explosions. Or, life is like a role-playing game: You adopt a persona and speak your part, always seeking adventure. Bringing together questions relating to diverse fields - such as politics, economics, sociology and philosophy - Castronova persuades readers to broaden the scope of game design to answer questions about life's everyday obstacles. The object of this book is to take seriously the idea that life is a game. The goal is not to make readers wealthier or healthier. Its goal is to go on a journey into the human condition, with game design as a guide.

Brian Clegg was always fascinated by Isaac Asimov's classic Foundation series of books, in which the future is predicted using sophisticated mathematical modelling of human psychology and behaviour. Only much later did he realise that Asimov's 'psychohistory' had a real-world equivalent: game theory. Originating in the study of probabilistic gambling games that depend on a random source - the throw of a dice or the toss of a coin - game theory soon came to be applied to human interactions: essentially, what was the best strategy to win, whatever you were doing? Its mathematical techniques have been applied, with varying degrees of wisdom, to fields such as economics, evolution, and questions such as how to win a nuclear war. Clegg delves into game theory's colourful history and significant findings, and shows what we can all learn from this oft-misunderstood field of study.

Market Structure and Competition Policy applies modern advances in game theory to the analysis of competition policy and develops some of the theoretical and policy concerns associated with the pioneering work of Louis Phlips. Containing contributions by leading scholars from Europe and North America, this book observes a common theme in the relationship between the regulatory regime and market structure. Since the inception of the new industrial organization, economists have developed a better understanding of how real world markets operate. These results have particular relevance to the design and application of anti-trust policy.

This booksurveys state-of-the-art optimization modeling for design, analysis, and management of wireless networks, such as cellular and wireless local area networks (LANs), and the services they deliver. The past two decades have seen a tremendous growth in the deployment and use of wireless networks. The current-generation wireless systems can provide mobile users with high-speed data services at rates substantially higher than those of the previous generation. As a result, the demand for mobile information services with high reliability, fast response times, and ubiquitous connectivity continues to increase rapidly. The optimization of system performance has become critically important both in terms of practical utility and commercial viability, and presents a rich area for research.

In the editors' previous work on traditional wired networks, we have observed that designing low cost, survivable telecommunication networks involves extremely complicated processes. Commercial products available to help with this task typically have been based on simulation and/or proprietary heuristics. As demonstrated in this book, however, mathematical programming deserves a prominent place in the designer's toolkit. Convenient modeling languages and powerful optimization solvers have greatly facilitated the implementation of mathematical programming theory into the practice of commercial network design.

These points are equally relevant and applicable in today's world of wireless network technology and design. But there are new issues as well: many wireless network design decisions, such as routing and facility/element location, must be dealt with in innovative ways that are unique and distinct from wired (fiber optic) networks. The book specifically treats the recent research and the use of modeling languages and network optimization techniques that are playing particularly important and distinctive roles in the wireless domain. "

This is the first of three volumes providing a comprehensive presentation of the fundamentals of scientific computing. This volume discusses basic principles of computation, and fundamental numerical algorithms that will serve as basic tools for the subsequent two volumes. This book and its companions show how to determine the quality of computational results, and how to measure the relative efficiency of competing methods. Readers learn how to determine the maximum attainable accuracy of algorithms, and how to select the best method for computing problems. This book also discusses programming in several languages, including C++, Fortran and MATLAB. There are 80 examples, 324 exercises, 77 algorithms, 35 interactive JavaScript programs, 391 references to software programs and 4 case studies. Topics are introduced with goals, literature references and links to public software. There are descriptions of the current algorithms in LAPACK, GSLIB and MATLAB. This book could be used for an introductory course in numerical methods, for either upper level undergraduates or first year graduate students. Parts of the text could be used for specialized courses, such as principles of computer languages or numerical linear algebra.

Give Your Students the Proper Groundwork for Future Studies in Optimization A First Course in Optimization is designed for a one-semester course in optimization taken by advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students in the mathematical sciences and engineering. It teaches students the basics of continuous optimization and helps them better understand the mathematics from previous courses. The book focuses on general problems and the underlying theory. It introduces all the necessary mathematical tools and results. The text covers the fundamental problems of constrained and unconstrained optimization as well as linear and convex programming. It also presents basic iterative solution algorithms (such as gradient methods and the Newton-Raphson algorithm and its variants) and more general iterative optimization methods. This text builds the foundation to understand continuous optimization. It prepares students to study advanced topics found in the author's companion book, Iterative Optimization in Inverse Problems, including sequential unconstrained iterative optimization methods.

Complex Social Networks is a newly emerging (hot) topic with applications in a variety of domains, such as communication networks, engineering networks, social networks, and biological networks. In the last decade, there has been an explosive growth of research on complex real-world networks, a theme that is becoming pervasive in many disciplines, ranging from mathematics and computer science to the social and biological sciences. Optimization of complex communication networks requires a deep understanding of the interplay between the dynamics of the physical network and the information dynamics within the network. Although there are a few books addressing social networks or complex networks, none of them has specially focused on the optimization perspective of studying these networks. This book provides the basic theory of complex networks with several new mathematical approaches and optimization techniques to design and analyze dynamic complex networks. A wide range of applications and optimization problems derived from research areas such as cellular and molecular chemistry, operations research, brain physiology, epidemiology, and ecology.

This book is a collection of selected papers presented at the Annual Meeting of the European Academy of Management and Business Economics (AEDEM), held at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Barcelona, 05 07 June, 2012. This edition of the conference has been presented with the slogan Creating new opportunities in an uncertain environment . There are different ways for assessing uncertainty in management but this book mainly focused on soft computing theories and their role in assessing uncertainty in a complex world.

The present book gives a comprehensive overview of general management topics and discusses some of the most recent developments in all the areas of business and management including management, marketing, business statistics, innovation and technology, finance, sports and tourism. This book might be of great interest for anyone working in the area of management and business economics and might be especially useful for scientists and graduate students doing research in these fields."

Throughout the evolutionary history of this planet, biological systems have been able to adapt, survive and ?ourish despite the turmoils and upheavals of the environment. This ability has long fascinated and inspired people to emulate and adapt natural processes for application in the arti?cial world of human endeavours. The realm of optimisation problems is no exception. In fact, in recent years biological systems have been the inspiration of the majority of meta-heuristic search algorithms including, but not limited to, genetic algorithms, particle swarmoptimisation, ant colony optimisation and extremal optimisation. This book presentsa continuum ofbiologicallyinspired optimisation, from the theoretical to the practical. We begin with an overview of the ?eld of biologically-inspired optimisation, progress to presentation of theoretical analysesandrecentextensionstoavarietyofmeta-heuristicsand?nallyshow application to a number of real-worldproblems. As such, it is anticipated the book will provide a useful resource for reseachers and practitioners involved in any aspect of optimisation problems. The overviewof the ?eld is provided by two works co-authored by seminal thinkers in the ?eld. Deb's "Evolution's Niche in Multi-Criterion Problem Solving," presents a very comprehensive and complete overview of almost all major issues in Evolutionary Multi-objective Optimisation (EMO). This chapter starts with the original motivation for developing EMO algorithms and provides an account of some successful problem domains on which EMO has demonstrated a clear edge over their classical counterparts.

This book presents the huge variety of current contributions of game theory to economics. The impressive contributions fall broadly into two categories. Some lay out in a jargon free manner a particular branch of the theory, the evolution of one of its concepts, or a problem, that runs through its development. Others are original pieces of work that are significant to game theory as a whole.
After taking the reader through a concise history of game theory, the contributions include such themes as:
*the connections between Von Neumann's mathematical game theory and the domain assigned to him today
*the strategic use of information by game players
*the problem of the coordination of strategic choices between independent players
*cooperative games and their place within the literature of games plus new developments in non-cooperative games
*possible applications for game theory in industrial and financial economics differential qualitative games and entry dissuasion.

The European Conference on Complex Systems, held under the patronage of the Complex Systems Society, is an annual event that has become the leading European conference devoted to complexity science. ECCS'12, its ninth edition, took place in Brussels, during the first week of September 2012. It gathered about 650 scholars representing a wide range of topics relating to complex systems research, with emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches. More specifically, the following tracks were covered:

1. Foundations of Complex Systems

2. Complexity, Information and Computation

3. Prediction, Policy and Planning, Environment

4. Biological Complexity

5. Interacting Populations, Collective Behavior

6. Social Systems, Economics and Finance

This book contains a selection of the contributions presented at the conference and its satellite meetings. Its contents reflect the extent, diversity and richness of research areas in the field, both fundamental and applied.

"

DLP denotes a dynamic-linear modeling and optimization approach to computational decision support for resource planning problems that arise, typically, within the natural resource sciences and the disciplines of operations research and operational engineering. It integrates techniques of dynamic programming (DP) and linear programming (LP) and can be realized in an immediate, practical and usable way. Simultaneously DLP connotes a broad and very general modeling/ algorithmic concept that has numerous areas of application and possibilities for extension. Two motivating examples provide a linking thread through the main chapters, and an appendix provides a demonstration program, executable on a PC, for hands-on experience with the DLP approach.

Optimal Design for Nonlinear Response Models discusses the theory and applications of model-based experimental design with a strong emphasis on biopharmaceutical studies. The book draws on the authors' many years of experience in academia and the pharmaceutical industry. While the focus is on nonlinear models, the book begins with an explanation of the key ideas, using linear models as examples. Applying the linearization in the parameter space, it then covers nonlinear models and locally optimal designs as well as minimax, optimal on average, and Bayesian designs. The authors also discuss adaptive designs, focusing on procedures with non-informative stopping. The common goals of experimental design-such as reducing costs, supporting efficient decision making, and gaining maximum information under various constraints-are often the same across diverse applied areas. Ethical and regulatory aspects play a much more prominent role in biological, medical, and pharmaceutical research. The authors address all of these issues through many examples in the book.

This book, based on a selection of talks given at a dedicated meeting in Cortona, Italy, in June 2013, shows the high degree of interaction between a number of fields related to applied sciences. Applied sciences consider situations in which the evolution of a given system over time is observed, and the related models can be formulated in terms of evolution equations (EEs). These equations have been studied intensively in theoretical research and are the source of an enormous number of applications. In this volume, particular attention is given to direct, inverse and control problems for EEs. The book provides an updated overview of the field, revealing its richness and vitality.

This contributed volume presents some of the latest research related to model order reduction of complex dynamical systems with a focus on time-dependent problems. Chapters are written by leading researchers and users of model order reduction techniques and are based on presentations given at the 2019 edition of the workshop series Model Reduction of Complex Dynamical Systems - MODRED, held at the University of Graz in Austria. The topics considered can be divided into five categories: system-theoretic methods, such as balanced truncation, Hankel norm approximation, and reduced-basis methods; data-driven methods, including Loewner matrix and pencil-based approaches, dynamic mode decomposition, and kernel-based methods; surrogate modeling for design and optimization, with special emphasis on control and data assimilation; model reduction methods in applications, such as control and network systems, computational electromagnetics, structural mechanics, and fluid dynamics; and model order reduction software packages and benchmarks. This volume will be an ideal resource for graduate students and researchers in all areas of model reduction, as well as those working in applied mathematics and theoretical informatics.

Individuals, firms, governments and nations behave strategically, for good and bad. Over the last few decades, game theory has been constructed and progressively refined to become the major tool used by social scientists to understand, predict and regulate strategic interaction among agents who often have conflicting interests. In the surprisingly anodyne jargon of the theory, they play games . This book offers an introduction to the basic tools of game theory and an overview of a number of applications to real-world cases, covering the areas of economics, politics and international relations. Each chapter is accompanied by some suggestions about further reading.

This textbook presents worked-out exercises on game theory with detailed step-by-step explanations. While most textbooks on game theory focus on theoretical results, this book focuses on providing practical examples in which students can learn to systematically apply theoretical solution concepts to different fields of economics and business. The text initially presents games that are required in most courses at the undergraduate level and gradually advances to more challenging games appropriate for graduate level courses. The first six chapters cover complete-information games, separately analyzing simultaneous-move and sequential-move games, with applications in industrial economics, law, and regulation. Subsequent chapters dedicate special attention to incomplete information games, such as signaling games, cheap talk games, and equilibrium refinements, emphasizing common steps and including graphical illustrations to focus students' attention on the most relevant payoff comparisons at each point of the analysis. In addition, exercises are ranked according to their difficulty, with a letter (A-C) next to the exercise number. This allows students to pace their studies and instructors to structure their classes accordingly. By providing detailed worked-out examples, this text gives students at various levels the tools they need to apply the tenets of game theory in many fields of business and economics. The second edition of the text has been revised to provide additional exercises at the introductory and intermediate level, expanding the scope of the book to be appropriate for upper undergraduate students looking to improve their understanding of the subject. The second edition also includes a new chapter devoted entirely to cheap talk games. Revised to appeal to a larger audience of instructors and students, this text is appropriate for introductory-to-intermediate courses in game theory at the upper undergraduate and graduate levels.

This book provides several inventory models for making the right decision in inventory management under different environments. Basically, the optimal ordering policies are determined for situations with and without shortages in production-inventory systems. The chapters in the book include various features of inventory modeling i.e., inflation, deterioration, supply chain, learning, credit financing, carbon emission policy, stock-dependent demand, among others. The book is a useful resource for academicians, researchers, students, practitioners, and managers who can be benefited with the policies provided in the chapters of the book.

The rise of game theory has made bargaining one of the core issues in economic theory. Written at a theoretical and conceptual level, the book develops a framework for the analysis of bargaining processes. The framework focuses on the dynamic of the bargaining process, which is in contrast to much previous theoretical work on the subject, and most notably to the approaches stemming from game theory. Chapters include: * Decision-Making and Expectations in Theories of Bargaining * Decision-Making and Expectations in a Game Theory Model * Limitations of the Environment Concept * Game Theory as a Basis for a Theory of Bargaining * The Decision/Expectation/adjustment Approach * The Adjustment Process * Direct Interdependence and the Consistency of Decisions

This book examines the economics of natural resource markets and pricing, as well as the field of natural resource economics in general. It presents the key contributions to this field of research, including the pioneering works and contemporary studies. The book highlights the basic principles and ideas underlying theoretical models of resource pricing. The models considered in the book underline the fundamental determinants of resource prices and the economic nature of rents for non-renewable and renewable resources. Besides the classical theory of exhaustible resource economics, the book includes several issues that are of high importance for global economic growth, such as the transition to alternative energy and the economics of climate change. The authors also consider the issues of commodity pricing and a resource cartel's activity that are relevant to the world oil market. The book provides analytical solutions illustrated with numerical examples. It allows an intuitive understanding of the subject and the model inferences through graphical illustrations and an informal introduction. It, therefore, is a must-read for everybody interested in a better understanding of resource prices, resource markets, and resource economics.

This contributed volume focuses on various important areas of mathematics in which approximation methods play an essential role. It features cutting-edge research on a wide spectrum of analytic inequalities with emphasis on differential and integral inequalities in the spirit of functional analysis, operator theory, nonlinear analysis, variational calculus, featuring a plethora of applications, making this work a valuable resource. The reader will be exposed to convexity theory, polynomial inequalities, extremal problems, prediction theory, fixed point theory for operators, PDEs, fractional integral inequalities, multidimensional numerical integration, Gauss-Jacobi and Hermite-Hadamard type inequalities, Hilbert-type inequalities, and Ulam's stability of functional equations. Contributions have been written by eminent researchers, providing up-to-date information and several results which may be useful to a wide readership including graduate students and researchers working in mathematics, physics, economics, operational research, and their interconnections.