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EXECUTIVE EDITORS
EDITORIAL BOARD
Recent Titles
Kevin J. Hastings
Knox College
Galesburg, Illinois, U.S.A.
vii
viii
PREFACE
In the time that has elapsed since the first edition of the book, titled
Introduction to the Mathematics of Operations Research, was published in
1989, changes have occurred in the discipline of Operations Research. The
field is in the midst of a crisis, partly a result of unnecessarily poor image and
partly because of real problems. The result is that its members question the
future of operations research. Meanwhile, better, faster, and more widely
available technology has made its way into the workplace of the O.R.
professional and into the mathematics curriculum, and lively discussion has
taken place about pedagogy, especially revolving around the passivity of
many students and the need to get them more actively involved with their
courses. I saw that the time had certainly come to revisit the first edition of
this book in an attempt to attune the book to current circumstances.
The first edition sprang from the following observations (paraphrased
from its preface). In industry, problems involving such areas as
telecommunications, scheduling, inventory, production, transportation, and
finance abound. Besides the inherent interest of these problems, there is also
aesthetic beauty in the mathematics. Operations Research is both an
assemblage of descriptive and analytical techniques to facilitate decision
making in business and industry, and a way of approaching problems. There
are concrete questions such as: what is the best way to schedule servers at a
service facility, what is the best mix of several kinds of products using scarce
raw materials, and how does one best maintain a machine that is deteriorating
with time? But looked at as a problem-solving approach, O.R. involves
defining and modeling the problem precisely, with enough detail to capture its
essence without making the problem intractable; deciding on objectives;
coming up with a solution, often an algorithm to improve a current
configuration; implementing that algorithm; and finally observing the
consequences of the answer. Much as in computer programming, the solution
process is often a cycle in which the researcher goes back to the beginning to
refine the model, the objectives, or the algorithm one or more times. The point
of view taken by the first edition of this book was that the vast assortment of
apparently unrelated questions in the field of O.R. is unified by the common
features of the mathematical models used to describe them, and the way of
going about solving problems. So the text was designed to show the
mathematics that underlies the applied problems, and subsequently to show
the “real-world” problems as examples of the application of the mathematical
and algorithmic thinking that will live on indefinitely as the passage of time
changes the kinds of problems that capture the attention of practitioners.
ix
x Preface
Also, it is as true now as it was fifteen years ago that there is a general
shortage of faculty experienced in O.R, especially at the small university and
private college level. The breadth of Operations Research and the
corresponding voluminous nature of most sources add to the difficulty of
course design for the non-specialist. I wanted a concise book whose focus
was on the mathematics of Operations Research, which would be a more
suitable introduction to the subject in a mathematical sciences department
with limited resources than other texts might be.
There is much in the first edition that remains meaningful, and which
validates the approach, given the criticism that has been leveled from inside
and outside of the field of Operations Research. One hears that Operations
Research groups are being phased out in many organizations because the
groups are not worth the investment. Criticisms usually include: our O.R.
people are trained to execute a few algorithms under stringent assumptions but
when it comes to an actual messy problem that does not fit a stereotype they
are lost; or, O.R. people prefer to do their esoteric research on some little
corner of the field about which only a few people really care. But my first
book took the point of view that a student of Operations Research cannot and
should not simply step through every method for every problem in every
application area without a feel for the core of the field or an understanding of
the complete problem-solving process. I believe that the subject is still vital,
useful, and an excellent part of an undergraduate mathematics major because
it gives deeper perspective on mathematics and its use, it exposes students to
mathematical modeling in situations grounded in reality, and, done correctly,
it greatly enhances their general reasoning and problem-solving ability. Even
if the phrase “Operations Research” dies out and even if O.R. departments
disappear, these kinds of skills will always be valuable to organizations in the
private and public sectors. And at least a few specific topics will always
occupy an important position in applied mathematics: representations of
problems using graphs, optimization of linear functions subject to linear
constraints, modeling and prediction of random events occurring through time,
and the optimal control of such random events. This is, and will remain, the
governing structure of the book: Graph Theory, Linear Programming,
Stochastic Processes, and Dynamic Programming.
The challenge in producing a new edition was to retain the character of
the book, yet take into account new developments in the spheres of
mathematics pedagogy and the field of O.R. In keeping with the comments
above, the following are the main areas in which the second edition differs
from the first:
3. The problem sets emphasize problem solving even more. Longer projects
are included that do not fit into existing molds, for which the students must
develop their own techniques.
4. A few new topics are included for more breadth: the traveling salesman
problem and other famous graph theory problems are introduced briefly in a
new section of Chapter 1, simulation has been integrated into Chapters 4 and
5, and a treatment of Brownian motion has been appended to Chapter 5, which
permits examples of problems in the growing field of mathematical finance to
be presented.
edition that the title has been modified to: Mathematics of Operations
Research with Mathematica. This is a completely self-contained printed text,
accompanied by an electronic version, together with a package of useful
commands that I have written. The electronic version is in the form of
Mathematica notebooks, one per section, and all Mathematica input cells will
be live, so that the students can reexecute commands, edit them, devise new
ones, etc. In this way, the student can direct his or her own study, which
increases greatly the level of involvement, and one hopes, the level of
comprehension and problem-solving.
Here are a few of the ways in which Mathematica has significant impact
on the book:
Kevin J. Hastings
Knox College
August 31, 2005
xiv Preface
Notes on Electronic Book xv
Contents
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