OPERATIONS RESEARCHby E. S. WentzelThe aim of this book is to present in a widely appealing form the sub­ject matter and methods of operations research(OR), a managerial tool designed to increase the effectiveness of mana­gerial decisions as an ob­jective supplement to the subjective assessment.With no confinement to an exclusive area of practice, the discussion in the book is focused on the methodological as­pects which are common to all OR problems is simple and requires wherever they might ap­pear. Therefore the main emphasis is placed on such methodological treatises as problem formulation, model development, and assessment of computational results, rather than on mathematical rigor. In writing this text the  author — a well known Soviet mathematician and popular novelist - employed her many-year experience in govern­ mental OR projects and lectureship at the Mos­cow Institute of Trans­portation Engineering to give a vivid presentation of the relevant methods of mathematical pro­gramming, game theory, queueing models, and decision analysis. The mathematics of the book is simple and requires only expertise in probability theory. The book is devoted primarily to the practitioners who are novices to the subject. It will be interesting to students, engineers, managerial staff and all those involved in deci­sion making.The book was translated from the Russian by Michael G. Edelev and was published by Mir in 1983.CONTENTSFOREWORD 71. THE NATURE AND USE OF OPERATIONS RESEARCH 111.1 Operations Research—What It Is and What It Does 111.2 Main Concepts and Approaches of Operations Research 181.3 Model Development 252. APPROACHING OPERATIONS RESEARCH PROBLEMS 312.1 Two Ways of Posing the Problem. Deterministic Models 312.2 Decision Making under Uncertainty 352.3 Multiobjective Problems 493. LINEAR PROGRAMMING 623.1 Linear Programming Problems 623.2 Moving to Algebraic Solution 723.3 A Geometric Method of Solution 763.4 The Transportation Problem 863.5 Integer Progamming. The Concepts of Nonlinear Programming 984. DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING 1044.1 Concepts of Dynamic Programming 104 4.2 Solving Dynamic Programming Examples 1144.3 A General Form of DP Problem. The Principle of Optimality 131 5. MARKOV PROCESSES 1385.1 The Concept of the Markov Process 138 5.2 Arrivals Defined 1455.3 The Kolmogorov Balance of State Equations 156. QUEUEING OR WAITING LINE THEORY 1636.1 Objectives and Models of the Theory 1636.2 The Birth and Death Process. The Little Formula 168 6.3 Analysis of Simplest Queueing Models 1746.4 More Complex Queueing Models 1937. STATISTICAL MODELING OF RANDOM PROCESSES (THE MONTE CARLO METHOD) 1997.1 Idea, Purpose and Scope of the Method 199 7.2. Organizing a Random Sampling Mechanism 2037.3 Modeling a Stationary Random Process by a Single Realization 2108. GAME THEORY FOR DECISION MAKING 2148.1 Subject and Problems of Game Theory 8.2 Matrix Games 2198.3 Resolving Finite Games 2288.4 Statistical Decision Analysis 240BIBLIOGRAPHY 254