The standard view of Operations Research/Management Science (OR/MS) dichotomizes the field into deterministic and probabilistic (nondeterministic, stochastic) subfields. This division can be seen by reading the contents page of just about any OR/MS textbook. The mathematical models that help to define OR/MS are usually presented in terms of one subfield or the other. This separation comes about somewhat artificially: academic courses are conveniently subdivided with respect to prerequisites; an initial overview of OR/MS can be presented without requiring knowledge of probability and...

This volume reflects the theme of the INFORMS 2004 Meeting in Denver: Back to OR Roots. Emerging as a quantitative approach to problem-solving in World War II, our founders were physicists, mathematicians, and engineers who quickly found peace-time uses. It is fair to say that Operations Research (OR) was born in the same incubator as computer science, and it has spawned many new disciplines, such as systems engineering, health care management, and transportation science. Although people from many disciplines routinely use OR methods, many scientific researchers, engineers, and others do not...

Welcome to ANALYZE, designed to provide computer assistance for analyzing linear programs and their solutions. Chapter 1 gives an overview of ANALYZE and how to install it. It also describes how to get started and how to obtain further documentation and help on-line. Chapter 2 reviews the forms of linear programming models and describes the syntax of a model. One of the routine, but important, functions of ANALYZE is to enable convenient access to rows and columns in the matrix by conditional delineation. Chapter 3 illustrates simple queries, like DISPLAY, LIST, and PICTURE. This chapter also...

Modeling by Object-Driven Linear Elemental Relations (MODLER) is a computer language for representing linear programming models, completely separate from instances defined by data realizations. It also includes representations of binary variables and logical constraints, which arise naturally in large-scale planning and operational decision support. The basic input to MODLER is a model file, and its basic output is a matrix file that is in a standard (MPS) format for most optimizers and for ANALYZE and RANDMOD. MODLER can also generate a syntax file for ANALYZE to enable automatic translation...

This volume reflects the theme of the INFORMS 2004 Meeting in Denver: Back to OR Roots. Emerging as a quantitative approach to problem-solving in World War II, our founders were physicists, mathematicians, and engineers who quickly found peace-time uses. It is fair to say that Operations Research (OR) was born in the same incubator as computer science, and it has spawned many new disciplines, such as systems engineering, health care management, and transportation science. Although people from many disciplines routinely use OR methods, many scientific researchers, engineers, and others do not...