Abstract
Operations research (OR) is a branch of applied mathematics dedicated to analytical decision-making, and has close ties with optimization, statistics, and mathematical modeling. As a discipline, it is often housed in schools of engineering or business, and undergraduate students of mathematics may have little exposure to the field. However, for students interested in practical applications of mathematics, operations research contains a wonderful abundance of problems. In this brief introduction, we discuss two classes of optimization problems of interest to operations research, linear programs (LP) and their generalization, convex programs. Both theory and applications are outlined. We also mention project ideas that could be pursued by undergraduates.
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Kotas, J. (2017). Mathematical Decision-Making with Linear and Convex Programming. In: Wootton, A., Peterson, V., Lee, C. (eds) A Primer for Undergraduate Research. Foundations for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66065-3_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66065-3_8
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