The title of this book seems to indicate that the volume is dedicated to a very specialized and narrow area, i. e. , to the relationship between a very special type of optimization and mathematical programming. The contrary is however true. Optimization is certainly a very old and classical area which is of high concern to many disciplines. Engineering as well as management, politics as well as medicine, artificial intelligence as well as operations research, and many other fields are in one way or another concerned with optimization of designs, decisions, structures, procedures, or information processes. It is therefore not surprising that optimization has not grown in a homogeneous way in one discipline either. Traditionally, there was a distinct difference between optimization in engineering, optimization in management, and optimization as it was treated in mathematical sciences. However, for the last decades all these fields have to an increasing degree interacted and contributed to the area of optimization or decision making. In some respects, new disciplines such as artificial intelligence, descriptive decision theory, or modern operations research have facilitated, or even made possible the interaction between the different classical disciplines because they provided bridges and links between areas which had been developing and applied quite independently before. The development of optimiiation over the last decades can best be appreciated when looking at the traditional model of optimization. For a well-structured, Le.

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