For junior/senior undergraduate and first-year graduate courses in Operations Research in departments of Industrial Engineering, Business Administration, Statistics, Computer Science, and Mathematics. Significantly revised, this text streamlines the coverage of the theory, applications, and computations of operations research. Numerical examples are effectively used to explain complex mathematical concepts. A separate chapter of fully analyzed applications aptly d… More >>
Operations Research: An Introduction
I’m a student at a CS school in Denmark, doing a course in OR, and this book served as my first introduction to the subject. The book has several flaws making it virtually useless as teaching material. From the very start, he stumbles, as he tries to explain the simplex algorithm, yet he doesn’t even give a single mathematical explanation of the process. There are two whole chapsters, devoted to simplex, yet there is no single “algorithmic” presentation in pseudo-code, of the algorithm. Other books (such as Introduction to Algorithms, 2nd ed, managers this fine.)
Many of the more subtle points of OR are badly explained. How duality relates the primal is explained theoretically in virtually a single five centimeter space, far from sufficient to explain the many aspects of duality (a key issue in OR). Further, one of the initially very confusing aspects of LP solving, is the signedness of variables. There are several approaches in the industry, and Taha follows one. This is all good and all, but that he fails to explain, how the algorithms change, depending on what signedness one uses, is totally unforgivable in an introductory text. It makes it very confusing initially (and still) to read other authors text, since it’s not clear how procedures vary from one text to another.
The book’s single saving grace, is that it has countless examples, but when you’re looking for the mathematical reasoning behind a procedure, this book falls far short. A book that proudly proclaims on the backcover: “Complex mathematical concepts are explained by means of carefully designed numerical examples, essentially eliminating the need for [...] mathematical proofs.” is not something you want. LP/IP programming IS math heavy, if you do not learn the theory, you will learn a very rigid and inflexible tool.
Further the CD comes with a Visual Basic program, the likes of which I have never seen, except perhaps ten years ago on download.com. It’s Windows only, and it has the poorest interface ever (it’s so obvious that this used to be a console program, quickly ported to Windows). And what’s worse, is that it gives /incorrect/ solutions! Our school has an installation of CPLEX, an industrial strength program for solving LP problems. Of course, one doesn’t expect TORA (the name for Tahas LP solver) to handle as big cases as CPLEX can, but it seems only fair to expect it to give the correct results.
Rating: 1 / 5
I want to manual salutions Chapter no. 2,3,4,5,6 of Operations Research by Hamdy A Taha.
Awaiting your reply by email. Thanks.
Rating: 1 / 5
I want to manual salutions Chapter no. 2,3,4,5,6 of Operations Research by Hamdy A Taha.
Awaiting your reply by email. Thanks.
Rating: 1 / 5
Introductory book for operations research. But after you get what OR is about, you should learn Linear, Non linear and Integer programming separately.
This book tells how to solve a Linear programming problem but not why this way? I strongly recommend Bazaara ’s Lp book to know the mechanism of Simplex method. But the discussion about various OR topics like transportaion, Assignment problems is excellent.
I got interested in OR reading this so I am sure all of you will like it.
Rating: 5 / 5
The book of Taha has used it for but of 15 years in my courses of operations research has been of great utility in the career of Industrial Engineering, in the system of technological institutes in Mexico, personally I believe that professors Taha, Hillier and Liberman have been a very important support for the teaching of this part of the application of the mathematics, besides other, to all my recognition, the details if there are errors and if the contents are or non frontier of the science, is to each professor’s approach that she/he teaches and she/he investigates, to make emphasis in some or others.
Rating: 5 / 5