Optimization is a common form of decision making, and is ubiquitous in our society. Its applications range from solving Sudoku puzzles to arranging seating in a wedding banquet. The same technology can schedule planes and their crews, coordinate the production of steel, and organize the transportation of iron ore from the mines to the ports.
Good decisions in manpower and material resources management also allow corporations to improve profit by millions of dollars. Similar problems also underpin much of our daily lives and are part of determining daily delivery routes for packages, making school timetables, and delivering power to our homes.
Despite their fundamental importance, all of these problems are a nightmare to solve using traditional undergraduate computer science methods.
This series consists of the following courses:
Coursera: Basic modeling for discrete optimization.
Coursera: Advanced modeling for discrete optimization.
Coursera: Solving algorithms for discrete optimization.