OPL (Optimization Programming Language) is a new modeling language for combinatorial optimization that simplifies the formulation and solution of optimization problems. Perhaps the most significant dimension of OPL is the support for constraint programming, including sophisticated search specifications, logical and higher order constraints, and support for scheduling and resource allocation applications. This book, written by the developer of OPL, is a comprehensive introduction to the OPL programming language and its application to problems in linear and integer programming, constraint programming, and scheduling. Readers should be familiar with combinatorial optimization, at least from an application standpoint.
Fascinating approach to mathematical teaching stresses use of recreational problems, puzzles, and games to teach critical thinking. Logic, number and graph theory, games of strategy, much more. Includes answers to selected problems. Free solutions manual available for download at the Dover website.
This Fourth Edition introduces the latest theory and applications in optimization. It emphasizes constrained optimization, beginning with a substantial treatment of linear programming and then proceeding to convex analysis, network flows, integer programming, quadratic programming, and convex optimization. Readers will discover a host of practical business applications as well as non-business applications. Topics are clearly developed with many numerical examples worked out in detail. Specific examples and concrete algorithms precede more abstract topics. With its focus on solving practical problems, the book features free C programs to implement the major algorithms covered, including the two-phase simplex method, primal-dual simplex method, path-following interior-point method, and homogeneous self-dual methods. In addition, the author provides online JAVA applets that illustrate various pivot rules and variants of the simplex method, both for linear programming and for network flows. These C programs and JAVA tools can be found on the book's website. The website also includes new online instructional tools and exercises.
This challenging collection of 42 mathematical mind-benders, compiled by a noted Lewis Carroll scholar, includes Castle Croquet, A Sticky but Polished Riddle, Who's Coming to Dinner?, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Eligible Apartments, Predicting the Total, and more. Includes complete solutions and drawings by John Tenniel, the original illustrator of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
This easy and medium difficulty sudoku puzzle book has been created for fun for all ages and can be played by children, adults and senior citizens alike - suitable for all beginner and intermediate sudoku puzzle lovers! Perfect for stimulating the mind and improving reasoning skills, this book contains 200 easy and medium difficulty level sudoku puzzles with solutions for each of the puzzles. A 'Beginners Guide' is included providing valuable tips for solving the puzzles. Whatever your age, you'll love this Easy & Medium Sudoku Puzzle book! This puzzle book is an ideal challenge for the beginner or intermediate Sudoku player and will provide hours of puzzling fun.
The ubiquity of combinatorial optimization problems in our society is illustrated by the novel application areas for optimization technology, which range from supply chain management to sports tournament scheduling. Over the last two decades, constraint programming has emerged as a fundamental methodology to solve a variety of combinatorial problems, and rich constraint programming languages have been developed for expressing and combining constraints and specifying search procedures at a high level of abstraction. Local search approaches to combinatorial optimization are able to isolate optimal or near-optimal solutions within reasonable time constraints. This book introduces a method for solving combinatorial optimization problems that combines constraint programming and local search, using constraints to describe and control local search, and a programming language, COMET, that supports both modeling and search abstractions in the spirit of constraint programming. After an overview of local search including neighborhoods, heuristics, and metaheuristics, the book presents the architecture and modeling and search components of constraint-based local search and describes how constraint-based local search is supported in COMET. The book describes a variety of applications, arranged by meta-heuristics. It presents scheduling applications, along with the background necessary to understand these challenging problems. The book also includes a number of satisfiability problems, illustrating the ability of constraint-based local search approaches to cope with both satisfiability and optimization problems in a uniform fashion.
This book includes 110 puzzles, not as individual problems but as incidents in connected stories. The first 31 are amusingly posed by pilgrims in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Additional puzzles are presented using different characters. Many require only the ability to exercise logical or visual skills; others offer a stimulating challenge to the mathematically advanced.
