Gerhard Reinelt - Böcker

AlegendsaysthatJackEdmondsshouted"Eureka-youshrink!"whenhefound a good characterization for matching (and the matching algorithm) in 1963, the daybeforehistalkatasummerworkshopatRANDCorporationwithcelebrities like George Dantzig, Ralph Gomory, and Alan Ho?man in the audience. During Aussois 2001, Jack con?rmed: "'Eureka - you shrink!' is really true, except that instead of 'Eureka' it maybe was some less digni?ed word." Aussois 2001 was the ?fth in an annual series of workshops on combinatorial optimization that are alternately organized by Thomas Liebling, Denis Naddef, andLaurenceWolsey-theinitiatorsofthisseries-inevenyearsandtheeditors of this book in odd years (except 1997). We decided to dedicate Aussois 2001 to Jack Edmonds in appreciation of his groundbreaking work that laid the foundations of much of what combinatorial optimizers have done in the last 35 years. Luckily, Jack is a regular participant of the Aussois workshops and, as ever, he cares a lot for young combinatorial optimizers who traditionally play a major r ole in the Aussois series. Fig.1.Handout for the Aussois 2001 participants VI Preface Highlights of Aussois 2001 included a special session entitled "Eureka - you shrink!" in honor of Jack and a special lecture by Jack on "Submodular Fu- tions, Matroids, and Certain Polyhedra" that closed the workshop. In this book, we give an account of the "Eureka - you shrink!" session as well as reprints of three hardly accessible papers that Jack gave as a handout to the Aussois 2001 participants and that were originally published in theProceedings oftheCalgaryInternationalConferenceonCombinatorialStructuresandTheir Applications 1969, Gordon and Breach (1970) - newly typeset by the editors and reprinted by permission.

This proceedings volume contains a selection of papers presented at the International Conference on Operations Research (OR 2003). The contributions cover the broad interdisciplinary spectrum of Operations Research and present recent advances in theory, development of methods, and applications in practice. Subjects covered are Revenue Management, Telecommunication, Information Technology, Production, Logistics, Supply Chain Management, Services, Transportation, Traffic, Scheduling, Project Management, Marketing, Data Analysis, Energy, Environment, Health, Finance, Banking, Insurances, Simulation, Continuous Optimization, Discrete and Combinatorial Optimization, Applied Probability, Artificial Intelligence, Fuzzy Logic, Neural Networks, Econometrics, Statistics, Mathematical Economics, Decision Theory, Experimental Economics, Game Theory, Auctioning, Web Technology, Knowledge Management, Decision Support Systems.

This book is devoted to the famous travelling salesman problem (TSP), which, is the task of finding a route of the shortest possible length through a given set of cities. The TSP attracts interest from several scientific communities and from numerous application areas. First the theoretical prerequisites are summarized. Then the emphasis shifts to computational solutions for practical TSP applications. Detailed computational experiments are used to show how to find good or acceptable routes for large problem instances in reasonable time. In total, this book meets a tremendous professional need for effective algorithms; it is the most comprehensive and up-to-date survey available on heuristic approaches to TSP solving.

In 1958, Ralph E. Gomory transformed the field of integer programming when he published a paper that described a cutting-plane algorithm for pure integer programs and announced that the method could be refined to give a finite algorithm for integer programming. In 2008, to commemorate the anniversary of this seminal paper, a special workshop celebrating fifty years of integer programming was held in Aussois, France, as part of the 12th Combinatorial Optimization Workshop.It contains reprints of key historical articles and written versions of survey lectures on six of the hottest topics in the field by distinguished members of the integer programming community. Useful for anyone in mathematics, computer science and operations research, this book exposes mathematical optimization, specifically integer programming and combinatorial optimization, to a broad audience.

Faced with the challenge of solving the hard optimization problems that abound in the real world, existing methods often encounter great difficulties. Important applications in business, engineering or economics cannot be tackled by the techniques that have formed the predominant focus of academic research throughout the past three decades. Exact and heuristic approaches are dramatically changing our ability to solve problems of practical significance and are extending the frontier of problems that can be handled effectively. This monograph details state-of-the-art optimization methods, both exact and heuristic, for the LOP. The authors employ the LOP to illustrate contemporary optimization technologies as well as how to design successful implementations of exact and heuristic procedures. Therefore, they do not limit the scope of this book to the LOP, but on the contrary, provide the reader with the background and practical strategies in optimization to tackle different combinatorial problems.

Martin Grötschel is one of the most influential mathematicians of our time. He has received numerous honors and holds a number of key positions in the international mathematical community. He celebrated his 65th birthday on September 10, 2013. Martin Grötschel’s doctoral descendant tree 1983–2012, i.e., the first 30 years, features 39 children, 74 grandchildren, 24 great-grandchildren and 2 great-great-grandchildren, a total of 139 doctoral descendants.This book starts with a personal tribute to Martin Grötschel by the editors (Part I), a contribution by his very special “predecessor” Manfred Padberg on “Facets and Rank of Integer Polyhedra” (Part II), and the doctoral descendant tree 1983–2012 (Part III). The core of this book (Part IV) contains 16 contributions, each of which is coauthored by at least one doctoral descendant.The sequence of the articles starts with contributions to the theory of mathematical optimization, including polyhedral combinatorics, extended formulations, mixed-integer convex optimization, super classes of perfect graphs, efficient algorithms for subtree-telecenters, junctions in acyclic graphs and preemptive restricted strip covering, as well as efficient approximation of non-preemptive restricted strip covering.Combinations of new theoretical insights with algorithms and experiments deal with network design problems, combinatorial optimization problems with submodular objective functions and more general mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problems. Applications include VLSI layout design, systems biology, wireless network design, mean-risk optimization and gas network optimization.Computational studies include a semidefinite branch and cut approach for the max k-cut problem, mixed-integer nonlinear optimal control, and mixed-integer linear optimization for scheduling and routing of fly-in safari planes.The two closing articles are devoted to computational advances in generalmixed integer linear optimization, the first by scientists working in industry, the second by scientists working in academia.These articles reflect the “scientific facets” of Martin Grötschel who has set standards in theory, computation and applications.

In 1958, Ralph E. Gomory transformed the field of integer programming when he published a paper that described a cutting-plane algorithm for pure integer programs and announced that the method could be refined to give a finite algorithm for integer programming. In 2008, to commemorate the anniversary of this seminal paper, a special workshop celebrating fifty years of integer programming was held in Aussois, France, as part of the 12th Combinatorial Optimization Workshop.It contains reprints of key historical articles and written versions of survey lectures on six of the hottest topics in the field by distinguished members of the integer programming community. Useful for anyone in mathematics, computer science and operations research, this book exposes mathematical optimization, specifically integer programming and combinatorial optimization, to a broad audience.

In the last decades, algorithmic advances as well as hardware and software improvements have provided an excellent environment to create and develop solving methods to hard optimization problems.