A complete, highly accessible introduction to one of today’ s most exciting areas of applied mathematics One of the youngest, most vital areas of applied mathematics, combinatorial optimization integrates techniques from combinatorics, linear programming, and the theory of algorithms. Because of its success in solving difficult problems in areas from telecommunications to VLSI, from product distribution to airline crew scheduling, the field has seen a ground swell of activity over the past decade. Combinatorial Optimization is an ideal introduction to this mathematical discipline for...

This volume presents the proceedings of the Fifth Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization Conference, IPCO V, held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in June 1996.
The 36 revised papers included in the book were selected from a total of 99 submissions; they highlight recent developments in theory, computation, and applications of integer programming and combinatorial optimization. The volume is organized in sections on integer programming theory and models, network flow algorithms, approximation algorithms, semi-definite methods, matrix models, set systems and...