Operations Research Tutorial

Author: Xiong Yijie
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: Operations Research is a required course for all majors in economics and management at universities, offered not only at the undergraduate level but also as a mandatory degree course in postgraduate teaching. It is particularly important that Operations Research is also a required course in postgraduate entrance examinations for management majors at many universities. However, in currently popular Operations Research textbooks, most are quite complex in structure, resulting in poor adaptability for teaching. This Operations Research Tutorial is primarily written to meet specific teaching objectives, specifically to serve the teaching needs of undergraduate and postgraduate students. This book is suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students in economics and management majors at universities, as well as for reference by all individuals engaged in Operations Research research. The book includes a total of 14 chapters. Chapters 0–6 are suitable for undergraduate teaching, while Chapters 7–10 are suitable for postgraduate teaching. Based on the author's years of teaching experience, a 40-hour teaching plan typically covers only a few chapters such as Linear Programming, Duality Programming, Transportation Problems, and Integer Programming. With 50 hours, Dynamic Programming can be added, and with 60 hours, Graph Theory and Network Analysis can also be included. However, in practice, undergraduate teaching plans rarely allocate more than 60 hours for Operations Research. Based on the situation of postgraduate entrance examinations for undergraduates over the years, the exam content for Operations Research in most universities is also limited to these chapters. According to the classification of Operations Research models, these chapters also cover the main content of Mathematical Programming and Deterministic Models in Operations Research. The main content of postgraduate teaching in Operations Research is Random Models in Operations Research, including Decision Theory, Game Theory, Inventory Theory, and Queuing Theory. These four chapters can basically meet the teaching needs of 40 hours of Operations Research for postgraduate students. Additionally, to adapt to the teaching needs of the MBA (Data Models and Decision Making course, which was formed after the reform of Operations Research), Chapter 13 has been expanded to include content related to data analysis. Meanwhile, given the increasing importance of Game Theory and Optimization in economics and management, Chapters 11 and 12 have been supplemented with "Introduction to Game Theory" and "Introduction to Optimization Methods." Furthermore, each chapter includes computer solution methods for corresponding problems, and a sufficient number of exercises are provided after each chapter. To meet the needs of MBA teaching, the first three chapters also include case study questions that must be completed.