| Popis: |
Why this textbook when there is an abundance of textbooks on operations research on the market? We felt that there is a need for a manageable textbook that is not a thousand pages long, a length that is daunting for beginning students, especially when it takes them an hour to digest what’s on one page. This motivational textbook provides a comprehensive yet concise introduction to operations research for students in a variety of fields such as engineering, business analytics, mathematics and statistics, computer science, and econometrics. It is the result of many years of teaching and feedback from many students. The didactic premise of the book is “motivation and insight first, before getting into details”. The objective is to present the material in a way that would immediately make sense to a beginning student. The book covers a wide range of topics from both deterministic and stochastic operations research. The emphasis is on useful models and interpreting the solutions in the context of concrete applications. The text is divided into several parts. The first three chapters deal exclusively with deterministic models, such as linear programming and sensitivity analysis, integer programming and heuristics, and network analysis including shortest paths, maximum flows and minimum cost flows. The next three chapters deal primarily with basic stochastic models and techniques, such as decision trees, dynamic programming and optimal stopping, production planning and inventory control. The first six chapters can be seen as a springboard to specialized texts, either practical or theoretical. The last five chapters contain more advanced material, including discrete-time and continuous-time Markov chains, queueing systems and networks of queues, Markov decision processes, and discrete-event simulation. Each chapter has many exercises and answers to a large selection of exercises are included. A solutions manual is available to qualified instructors who have adopted the book as required reading for their courses. The book is an adaptation of an earlier Dutch version that was used at several Dutch universities. We would like to thank Reinie Erné for doing an excellent job in translating the Dutch text. |
