Intorduction To Operations Research - Hillier

I've been doing operations research for a number of years now, and I still use this book. I find it really incredible, in that it is the best-written book I have ever seen in this highly mathematical area, with no second! It introduces topics so well that I can skip right to the chapter covering the topic in which I am interested and catch the maximum continuous learning gradient from the global minimum to the global maximum, complete with a survey of and references to the latest research in the field. It's very up to date. The courseware makes it so that even an idiot could understand what is going on. If you can't learn operations research from this, you can't learn operations research. And if you want a quick refresher, an update, or a survey of field X, it accomplishes these equally well.

I hesitated a long time before I bought this book, and I am very sorry about that. I started my M.Sc. in Operations Research and Decisions at the Tel Aviv University 3 years ago, and the first course I took was Optimization. I was a new immigrant to Israel, and I had difficulty in understanding the subject in Hebrew (it is not that easy even when you master the language!) The course book was this one; therefore, I decided to put all my efforts in the book rather than in the classes. Thanks god!

IMHO, Hillier and Lieberman make it clear that Operations Research is the father/mother of all the mathematical and statistical models that support decision making. They wrote the book in a way that all these models (including game theory, Markov models, decision trees, simplex, and others) seem closely linked to, or maybe even a consequence of, the development of Operations Research. The authors do not only explain models and techniques, they tell the story of the introduction of mathematics and statistics into the decision making world.

I read this book from upside down ten times and I really enjoyed it. The examples are so well chosen and interesting that I still remember them. But the biggest advantage of the book is its wide range of subjects, each treated in-depth. I have used the book for three important courses during my masters: Optimization, Stochastic process, and Decision theory. For all these courses, this book was the most comprehensible and interesting resource (though sometimes it was only an introduction, and I had to find more detailed material). The subjects discussed on the book go from an introduction to Operations Research, through modeling techniques, linear programming (Simplex), duality theory, the transportation problem, network optimization, dynamic programming, integer programming, nonlinear programming, game theory, decision analysis, Markov chains, queueing theory, and inventory theory.

Don't hesitate, if you got to this page you probably are looking for a good resource on Operations Research. This tome serves beginners, intermediates, and advanced knowledge seekers in the field.