OR-Notes

J E Beasley

OR-Notes are a series of introductory notes on topics that fall under the broad heading of the field of operations research (OR). They were originally used by me in an introductory OR course I give at Imperial College. They are now available for use by any students and teachers interested in OR subject to the following conditions.

A full list of the topics available in OR-Notes can be found here.

Mathematical notation

When constructing OR-Notes I have tried to ensure that mathematical notation is kept to a minimum and also that most Web browsers should be able to view OR-Notes correctly.

However because of the current limitations of html (the language interpreted by your Web browser into readable text) I have adopted the following notation:

<= should be read as "less than or equal to"
>= should be read as "greater than or equal to"
SUM[i=1 to n] should be read as "sum over all integer values of i from 1 to n inclusive"
INFINITY is used instead of an infinity sign
PI is used instead of a pi symbol

Subscripts and superscripts should be displayed correctly by the latest versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers. To check your browser:

x₁ should be "x subscript 1"
x¹ should be "x superscript 1"

The pound sterling sign should be displayed correctly by the latest versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers. To check your browser:

£ should be "the pound sterling sign"

If the above subscript, superscript and pound sterling sign are not displayed correctly then I suggest that you upgrade your browser. If this is not possible then:

save the OR-Notes files you are interested in on your own computer
use your favourite word processor to edit these files

for subscripts:

change and to {
change and to }
this will ensure all subscripts are denoted by {} e.g. x subscript i becomes x{i}

for superscripts:

change and to ^{
change and to }
change ² to ^{2}
change ³ to ^{3}
this will ensure all superscripts are denoted by ^{} e.g. x superscript i becomes x^{i}

for the pound sterling sign:

change £ to £ or to $ if you prefer to change currency;
this will ensure that all pound sterling signs in the text appear correctly

save the edited files as DOS ASCII text files
now use your Web browser to view these files