This book explains, in a straightforward way, the foundations upon which electoral techniques are based in order to shed new light on what we actually do when we vote. The intention is to highlight the fact that no matter how an electoral system has been designed, and regardless of the intentions of those who devised the system, there will be goals that are impossible to achieve but also opportunities for improving the situation in an informed way. While detailed descriptions of electoral systems are not provided, many references are made to current or past situations, both as examples and to underline particular problems and shortcomings. In addition, a new voting method that avoids the many paradoxes of voting theory is described in detail. While some knowledge of mathematics is required in order to gain the most from the book, every effort has been made to ensure that the subject matter is easily accessible for non-mathematicians, too. In short, this is a book for anyone who wants to understand the meaning of voting.

This book provides a handy, unified introduction to the theory of compact extended formulations of exponential-size integer linear programming (ILP) models. Compact extended formulations are equally powerful, but polynomial-sized, models whose solutions do not require the implementation of separation and pricing procedures. The book is written in a general, didactic form, first developing the background theoretical concepts (polyhedra, projections, linear and integer programming) and then delving into the various techniques for compact extended reformulations. The techniques are illustrated through a wealth of examples touching on many application areas, such as classical combinatorial optimization, network design, timetabling, scheduling, routing, computational biology and bioinformatics. The book is intended for graduate or PhD students - either as an advanced course on selected topics or within a more general course on ILP and mathematical programming - as well as for practitioners and software engineers in industry exploring techniques for developing optimization models for their specific problems.

Il volume tratta alcuni fra i temi piu importanti della Ricerca Operativa, traendo spunti da alcuni problemi reali di carattere gestionale e cercando di dare al lettore un metodo di modellizzazione e di risoluzione, cosi da fornire quella professionalita che poi permettera di risolvere casi reali abbastanza complessi. A questo riguardo la Programmazione lineare e la Programmazione lineare intera svolgono nel testo un ruolo centrale, come "utensili" principali del processo risolutivo.

I problemi proposti, inizialmente presentati in forma semplice, sono poi modellati in modo sempre piu complesso. Gli strumenti analitici e informatici per progettare e risolvere i modelli vengono spiegati facendo riferimento ai problemi stessi.