Congruences are ubiquitous in computer science, engineering, mathematics, and related areas. Developing techniques for finding (the number of) solutions of congruences is an important problem. But there are many scenarios in which we are interested in only a subset of the solutions; in other words, there are some restrictions. What do we know about these restricted congruences, their solutions, and applications? This book introduces the tools that are needed when working on restricted congruences and then systematically studies a variety of restricted congruences. Restricted Congruences in Computing defines several types of restricted congruence, obtains explicit formulae for the number of their solutions using a wide range of tools and techniques, and discusses their applications in cryptography, information security, information theory, coding theory, string theory, quantum field theory, parallel computing, artificial intelligence, computational biology, discrete mathematics, number theory, and more. This is the first book devoted to restricted congruences and their applications. It will be of interest to graduate students and researchers across computer science, electrical engineering, and mathematics.

Statistical Decision Problems presents a quick and concise introduction into the theory of risk, deviation and error measures that play a key role in statistical decision problems. It introduces state-of-the-art practical decision making through twenty-one case studies from real-life applications. The case studies cover a broad area of topics and the authors include links with source code and data, a very helpful tool for the reader. In its core, the text demonstrates how to use different factors to formulate statistical decision problems arising in various risk management applications, such as optimal hedging, portfolio optimization, cash flow matching, classification, and more. The presentation is organized into three parts: selected concepts of statistical decision theory, statistical decision problems, and case studies with portfolio safeguard. The text is primarily aimed at practitioners in the areas of risk management, decision making, and statistics. However, the inclusion of a fair bit of mathematical rigor renders this monograph an excellent introduction to the theory of general error, deviation, and risk measures for graduate students. It can be used as supplementary reading for graduate courses including statistical analysis, data mining, stochastic programming, financial engineering, to name a few. The high level of detail may serve useful to applied mathematicians, engineers, and statisticians interested in modeling and managing risk in various applications.

The book provides a collection of recent applications of nature inspired optimization in industrial fields. Different optimization techniques have been deployed, and different problems have been effectively analyzed. The valuable contributions from researchers focus on three ultimate goals (i) improving the accuracy of these techniques, (ii) achieving higher speed and lower computational complexity, and (iii) working on their proposed applications. The book is helpful for active researchers and practitioners in the field.

This basic book has been used at the middle schools in Shanghai, China for more than 10 years. The book presents carefully-selected contents in order to achieve the roles of enlightenment and popularization. It mainly includes: Chapter 1: Human Brains, Computers and Fuzzy Mathematics; Chapter 2: Matrix, Fuzzy Relations and Fuzzy Matrix; Chapter 3: Fuzzy Control; Chapter 4: Fuzzy Statistics and Fuzzy Probability and Chapter 5: Fuzzy Linear Programming. It includes at the end of each chapter concise, interesting and profound reading and thinking materials, and a certain amount of exercises so as to make it an informative and interesting textbook. This book can be used not only as a textbook in senior middle schools, and in vocational colleges, but also as a primer for individually learning fuzzy mathematics.

The detailed survey on constraint handling techniques specifically penalty function approach is presented in the book; presents the Cohort Intelligence (CI) algorithm incorporated with a novel self-adaptive penalty function (SAPF) approach which helped in avoiding preliminary trials of selecting penalty parameter. The approach is referred to as CI-SAPF; CI-SAPF is further hybridized with Colliding Bodies Optimization (CBO) algorithm to promote a parameter less metaheuristic algorithm; presents solutions to several problems from discrete truss structure domain, mixed variable design engineering domain, and linear & nonlinear domain validating the CI-SAPF and CI-SAPF-CBO; behavior of SAPF approach on pseudo objective function, constraint violations, penalty function and penalty parameter have been analyzed and discussed in very detail; presents the in-depth analysis and comparison of the CI-SAPF, CI-SAPF-CBO and CBO algorithms with other contemporary techniques; provides the solution to real-world manufacturing problems of optimizing multi pass milling and turning processes using CI-SPF, CI-SAPF and CI-SAPF-CBO approaches.

This unique book describes how the General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS) can be used to solve various power system operation and planning optimization problems. This book is the first of its kind to provide readers with a comprehensive reference that includes the solution codes for basic/advanced power system optimization problems in GAMS, a computationally efficient tool for analyzing optimization problems in power and energy systems. The book covers theoretical background as well as the application examples and test case studies. It is a suitable reference for dedicated and general audiences including power system professionals as well as researchers and developers from the energy sector and electrical power engineering community and will be helpful to undergraduate and graduate students.

This book includes selected peer-reviewed papers presented at the International Conference on Modeling, Simulation and Optimization, organized by National Institute of Technology, Silchar, Assam, India, during 3-5 August 2020. The book covers topics of modeling, simulation and optimization, including computational modeling and simulation, system modeling and simulation, device/VLSI modeling and simulation, control theory and applications, modeling and simulation of energy system and optimization. The book disseminates various models of diverse systems and includes solutions of emerging challenges of diverse scientific fields.

This is the first book about the discrete ordered median problem (DOMP), which unifies many classical and new facility location problems. Several exact and heuristic approaches are developed in this book in order to solve the DOMP.

Audience: The book is suitable for researchers in location theory, and graduate students in combinatorial optimization.

This volume contains select papers presented during the 2nd National Conference on Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization. It discusses new developments at the core of optimization methods and its application in multiple applications. The papers showcase fundamental problems and applications which include domains such as aerospace, automotive and industrial sectors. The variety of topics and diversity of insights presented in the general field of optimization and its use in design for different applications will be of interest to researchers in academia or industry.

Casino games and traditional card games have rich and idiosyncratic histories, complex subcultures and player practices, and facilitate the flow of billions of dollars each year through casinos and card rooms, and between professional players and amateurs. They have nevertheless been overlooked by game scholars due to the negative ethical weight of “gambling” – with such games pathologized and labelled as deviance or mental illness, few look beyond to unpick the games, their players, and their communities. The Casino, Card and Betting Game Reader offers 25 chapters studying the communities playing these games, the distinctive cultures and practices that have emerged around them, their activities and beliefs and interpersonal relationships, and how these games influence – both positively and negatively – the lives and careers of millions of game players around the world. It is the first of a new series of edited collections, Play Beyond the Computer, dedicated to exploring the play of games beyond computers and games consoles.

Engineering systems operate through actuators, most of which will exhibit phenomena such as saturation or zones of no operation, commonly known as dead zones. These are examples of piecewise-affine characteristics, and they can have a considerable impact on the stability and performance of engineering systems. This book targets controller design for piecewise affine systems, fulfilling both stability and performance requirements. The authors present a unified computational methodology for the analysis and synthesis of piecewise affine controllers, taking an approach that is capable of handling sliding modes, sampled-data, and networked systems. They introduce algorithms that will be applicable to nonlinear systems approximated by piecewise affine systems, and they feature several examples from areas such as switching electronic circuits, autonomous vehicles, neural networks, and aerospace applications. Piecewise Affine Control: Continuous-Time, Sampled-Data, and Networked Systems is intended for graduate students, advanced senior undergraduate students, and researchers in academia and industry. It is also appropriate for engineers working on applications where switched linear and affine models are important.

Public-Private Partnerships (PPP or 3Ps) allow the public sector to seek alternative funding and expertise from the private sector during procurement processes. Such partnerships, if executed with due diligence, often benefit the public immensely. Unfortunately, Public-Private Partnerships can be vulnerable to corruption. This book looks at what measures we can put in place to check corruption during procurement and what good governance strategies the public sector can adopt to improve the performance of 3Ps. The book applies mathematical models to analyze 3Ps. It uses game theory to study the interaction and dynamics between the stakeholders and suggests strategies to reduce corruption risks in various 3Ps stages. The authors explain through game theory-based simulation how governments can adopt a evaluating process at the start of each procurement to weed out undesirable private partners and why the government should take a more proactive approach. Using a methodological framework rooted in mathematical models to illustrate how we can combat institutional corruption, this book is a helpful reference for anyone interested in public policymaking and public infrastructure management.

Linear programming attracted the interest of mathematicians during and after World War II when the first computers were constructed and methods for solving large linear programming problems were sought in connection with specific practical problems for example, providing logistical support for the U.S. Armed Forces or modeling national economies. Early attempts to apply linear programming methods to solve practical problems failed to satisfy expectations. There were various reasons for the failure. One of them, which is the central topic of this book, was the inexactness of the data used to create the models. This phenomenon, inherent in most practical problems, has been dealt with in several ways. At first, linear programming models used average values of inherently vague coefficients, but the optimal solutions of these models were not always optimal for the original problem itself. Later researchers developed the stochastic linear programming approach, but this too has its limitations. Recently, interest has been given to linear programming problems with data given as intervals, convex sets and/or fuzzy sets. literature has not presented a unified theory. Linear Optimization Problems with Inexact Data attempts to present a comprehensive treatment of linear optimization with inexact data, summarizing existing results and presenting new ones within a unifying framework.

Noisy optimization is a topic of growing interest for researchers working on mainstream optimization problems. Although several techniques for dealing with stochastic noise in optimization problems are covered in journals and conference proceedings, today there are virtually no books that approach noisy optimization from a layman's perspective; this book remedies that gap. Beginning with the foundations of evolutionary optimization, the book subsequently explores the principles of noisy optimization in single and multi-objective settings, and presents detailed illustrations of the principles developed for application in real-world multi-agent coordination problems. Special emphasis is given to the design of intelligent algorithms for noisy optimization in real-time applications. The book is unique in terms of its content, writing style and above all its simplicity, which will appeal to readers with a broad range of backgrounds. The book is divided into 7 chapters, the first of which provides an introduction to Swarm and Evolutionary Optimization algorithms. Chapter 2 includes a thorough review of agent architectures for multi-agent coordination. In turn, Chapter 3 provides an extensive review of noisy optimization, while Chapter 4 addresses issues of noise handling in the context of single-objective optimization problems. An illustrative case study on multi-robot path-planning in the presence of measurement noise is also highlighted in this chapter. Chapter 5 deals with noisy multi-objective optimization and includes a case study on noisy multi-robot box-pushing. In Chapter 6, the authors examine the scope of various algorithms in noisy optimization problems. Lastly, Chapter 7 summarizes the main results obtained in the previous chapters and elaborates on the book's potential with regard to real-world noisy optimization problems.

This book presents fundamental concepts of optimization problems and its real-world applications in various fields. The core concepts of optimization, formulations and solution procedures of various real-world problems are provided in an easy-to-read manner. The unique feature of this book is that it presents unified knowledge of the modelling of real-world decision-making problems and provides the solution procedure using the appropriate optimization techniques. The book will help students, researchers, and faculty members to understand the need for optimization techniques for obtaining optimal solution for the decision-making problems. It provides a sound knowledge of modelling of real-world problems using optimization techniques. It is a valuable compendium of several optimization techniques for solving real-world application problems using optimization software LINGO. The book is useful for academicians, practitioners, students and researchers in the field of OR. It is written in simple language with a detailed explanation of the core concepts of optimization techniques. Readers of this book will understand the formulation of real-world problems and their solution procedures obtained using the appropriate optimization techniques.

This book focuses largely on constrained optimization. It begins with a substantial treatment of linear programming and proceeds to convex analysis, network flows, integer programming, quadratic programming, and convex optimization. Along the way, dynamic programming and the linear complementarity problem are touched on as well. This book aims to be the first introduction to the topic. Specific examples and concrete algorithms precede more abstract topics. Nevertheless, topics covered are developed in some depth, a large number of numerical examples worked out in detail, and many recent results are included, most notably interior-point methods. The exercises at the end of each chapter both illustrate the theory, and, in some cases, extend it. Optimization is not merely an intellectual exercise: its purpose is to solve practical problems on a computer. Accordingly, the book comes with software that implements the major algorithms studied. At this point, software for the following four algorithms is available: The two-phase simplex method The primal-dual simplex method The path-following interior-point method The homogeneous self-dual methods.GBP/LISTGBP.

Game theory involves multi-person decision making and differential dynamic game theory has been widely applied to n-person decision making problems, which are stimulated by a vast number of applications. This book addresses the gap to discuss general stochastic n-person noncooperative and cooperative game theory with wide applications to control systems, signal processing systems, communication systems, managements, financial systems, and biological systems. H8 game strategy, n-person cooperative and noncooperative game strategy are discussed for linear and nonlinear stochastic systems along with some computational algorithms developed to efficiently solve these game strategies.

The quadratic binary optimization problem (QUBO) is a versatile combinatorial optimization model with a variety of applications and rich theoretical properties. Application areas of the model include finance, cluster analysis, traffic management, machine scheduling, VLSI physical design, physics, quantum computing, engineering, and medicine. In addition, various mathematical optimization models can be reformulated as a QUBO, including the resource constrained assignment problem, set partitioning problem, maximum cut problem, quadratic assignment problem, the bipartite unconstrained binary optimization problem, among others. This book presents a systematic development of theory, algorithms, and applications of QUBO. It offers a comprehensive treatment of QUBO from various viewpoints, including a historical introduction along with an in-depth discussion of applications modelling, complexity and polynomially solvable special cases, exact and heuristic algorithms, analysis of approximation algorithms, metaheuristics, polyhedral structure, probabilistic analysis, persistencies, and related topics. Available software for solving QUBO is also introduced, including public domain, commercial, as well as quantum computing based codes.

Handbook of the Shapley Value contains 24 chapters and a foreword written by Alvin E. Roth, who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with Lloyd Shapley in 2012. The purpose of the book is to highlight a range of relevant insights into the Shapley value. Every chapter has been written to honor Lloyd Shapley, who introduced this fascinating value in 1953. The first chapter, by William Thomson, places the Shapley value in the broader context of the theory of cooperative games, and briefly introduces each of the individual contributions to the volume. This is followed by a further contribution from the editors of the volume, which serves to introduce the more significant features of the Shapley value. The rest of the chapters in the book deal with different theoretical or applied aspects inspired by this interesting value and have been contributed specifically for this volume by leading experts in the area of Game Theory. Chapters 3 through to 10 are more focused on theoretical aspects of the Shapley value, Chapters 11 to 15 are related to both theoretical and applied areas. Finally, from Chapter 16 to Chapter 24, more attention is paid to applications of the Shapley value to different problems encountered across a diverse range of fields. As expressed by William Thomson in the Introduction to the book, "The chapters contribute to the subject in several dimensions: Mathematical foundations; axiomatic foundations; computations; applications to special classes of games; power indices; applications to enriched classes of games; applications to concretely specified allocation problems: an ever-widening range, mapping allocation problems into games or implementation." Nowadays, the Shapley value continues to be as appealing as when it was first introduced in 1953, or perhaps even more so now that its potential is supported by the quantity and quality of the available results. This volume collects a large amount of work that definitively demonstrates that the Shapley value provides answers and solutions to a wide variety of problems.

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the state of the art in the philosophy of physics. It comprisess 54 self-contained chapters written by leading philosophers of physics at both senior and junior levels, making it the most thorough and detailed volume of its type on the market - nearly every major perspective in the field is represented. The Companion's 54 chapters are organized into 12 parts. The first seven parts cover all of the major physical theories investigated by philosophers of physics today, and the last five explore key themes that unite the study of these theories. I. Newtonian Mechanics II. Special Relativity III. General Relativity IV. Non-Relativistic Quantum Theory V. Quantum Field Theory VI. Quantum Gravity VII. Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics VIII. Explanation IX. Intertheoretic Relations X. Symmetries XI. Metaphysics XII. Cosmology The difficulty level of the chapters has been carefully pitched so as to offer both accessible summaries for those new to philosophy of physics and standard reference points for active researchers on the front lines. An introductory chapter by the editors maps out the field, and each part also begins with a short summary that places the individual chapters in context. The volume will be indispensable to any serious student or scholar of philosophy of physics.

Metaheuristics for Resource Deployment under Uncertainty in Complex Systems analyzes how to set locations for the deployment of resources to incur the best performance at the lowest cost. Resources can be static nodes and moving nodes while services for a specific area or for customers can be provided. Theories of modeling and solution techniques are used with uncertainty taken into account and real-world applications used. The authors present modeling and metaheuristics for solving resource deployment problems under uncertainty while the models deployed are related to stochastic programming, robust optimization, fuzzy programming, risk management, and single/multi-objective optimization. The resources are heterogeneous and can be sensors and actuators providing different tasks. Both separate and cooperative coverage of the resources are analyzed. Previous research has generally dealt with one type of resource and considers static and deterministic problems, so the book breaks new ground in its analysis of cooperative coverage with heterogeneous resources and the uncertain and dynamic properties of these resources using metaheuristics. This book will help researchers, professionals, academics, and graduate students in related areas to better understand the theory and application of resource deployment problems and theories of uncertainty, including problem formulations, assumptions, and solution methods.

Optimization of Pharmaceutical Processes presents contributions from leading authorities in the fields of optimization and pharmaceutical manufacturing. Formulated within structured frameworks, practical examples and applications are given as guidance to apply optimization techniques to most aspects of pharmaceutical processes from design, to lab and pilot scale, and finally to manufacturing. The increasing demand for better quality, higher yield, more efficient-optimized and green pharmaceutical processes, indicates that optimal conditions for production must be applied to achieve simplicity, lower costs and superior yield. The application of such methods in the pharmaceutical industry is not trivial. Quality of the final product is of major importance to human health and the need for deep knowledge of the process parameters and the optimization of the processes are imperative. The volume, which includes new methods as well as review contributions will benefit a wide readership including engineers in pharmaceuticals, chemical, biological, to name just a few.

- Includes industrial case studies - Includes chapters on cyber physical systems, machine learning, deep learning, cyber security, robotics, smart manufacturing and predictive analytics - surveys current trends and challenges in metaheuristics and industry 4.0

This book is a new contribution aiming to give some last research findings in the field of optimization and computing. This work is in the same field target than our two previous books published: "Recent Developments in Metaheuristics" and "Metaheuristics for Production Systems", books in Springer Series in Operations Research/Computer Science Interfaces. The challenge with this work is to gather the main contribution in three fields, optimization technique for production decision, general development for optimization and computing method and wider spread applications. The number of researches dealing with decision maker tool and optimization method grows very quickly these last years and in a large number of fields. We may be able to read nice and worthy works from research developed in chemical, mechanical, computing, automotive and many other fields.

the handbook is a valuable reference to researchers from industry and academia, as well as Masters and PhD students around the globe working in the metaheuristics and applications domain includes contributions from a variety of academics/researchers in the field of metaheuristics