A pioneering look at the fundamental role of logic in optimization and constraint satisfaction

While recent efforts to combine optimization and constraint satisfaction have received considerable attention, little has been said about using logic in optimization as the key to unifying the two fields. Logic-Based Methods for Optimization develops for the first time a comprehensive conceptual framework for integrating optimization and constraint satisfaction, then goes a step further and shows how extending logical inference to optimization allows for more powerful as well as flexible modeling and solution techniques. Designed to be easily accessible to industry professionals and academics in both operations research and artificial intelligence, the book provides a wealth of examples as well as elegant techniques and modeling frameworks ready for implementation. Timely, original, and thought-provoking, Logic-Based Methods for Optimization:

• Demonstrates the advantages of combining the techniques in problem solving
• Offers tutorials in constraint satisfaction/constraint programming and logical inference
• Clearly explains such concepts as relaxation, cutting planes, nonserial dynamic programming, and Bender’s decomposition
• Reviews the necessary technologies for software developers seeking to combine the two techniques
• Features extensive references to important computational studies
• And much more

In what is probably the fullest and most vivid extant account of the American Colonial frontier, "The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution" gives shape to the daily life, thoughts, hopes, and fears of the frontier people. It is set forth by one of the most extraordinary men who ever sought out the wilderness--Charles Woodmason, an Anglican minister whose moral earnestness and savage indignation, combined with a vehement style, make him worthy of comparison with Swift. The book consists of his journal, selections from the sermons he preached to his Backcountry congregations, and the letters he wrote to influential people in Charleston and England describing life on the frontier and arguing the cause of the frontier people. Woodmason's pleas are fervent and moving; his narrative and descriptive style is colorful to a degree attained by few writers in Colonial America.