Operations Research and Statistics

Abstract

In this chapter, we will look at optimization problems from a different point of view—from one that is, in some sense, more fundamental. We will interpret finding the optimum solution of an optimization problem as a search process on the space of legal configurations. (From now on, we will mostly be concerned with legal configurations. Thus, we will omit the word legal unless it is not clear from the context what kind of a configuration we mean.) The configuration space can be represented as a set of geometric points or, alternatively, as a directed graph, and we will choose whatever representation is better suited to our purpose. There exists a large number of search heuristics and strategies for optimization problems; we will survey the ones that are most important for layout design.