Book 4

Greedoids

by Bernhard Korte, Laszlo Lovasz, and Rainer Schrader

Published 18 October 2012
Oh cieca cupidigia, oh ira folie, Che si ci sproni nella vita corta, E nell' eterna poi si mal c'immolle! o blind greediness and foolish rage, That in our fleeting life so goads us on And plunges us in boiling blood for ever! Dante, The Divine Comedy Inferno, XII, 17, 49/51. On an afternoon hike during the second Oberwolfach conference on Mathematical Programming in January 1981, two of the authors of this book discussed a paper by another two of the authors (Korte and Schrader [1981]) on approximation schemes for optimization problems over independence systems and matroids. They had noticed that in many proofs the hereditary property of independence systems and matroids is not needed: it is not required that every subset of a feasible set is again feasible. A much weaker property is sufficient, namely that every feasible set of cardinality k contains (at least) one feasible subset of cardinality k - 1. We called this property accessibility, and that was the starting point of our investigations on greedoids.

Book 21

This comprehensive textbook on combinatorial optimization puts special emphasis on theoretical results and algorithms with provably good performance, in contrast to heuristics. It has arisen as the basis of several courses on combinatorial optimization and more special topics at graduate level. Since the complete book contains enough material for at least four semesters (4 hours a week), one usually selects material in a suitable way. The book contains complete (but concise) proofs, also for many deep results, some of which did not appear in a book before. Many very recent topics are covered as well, and many references are provided. Thus this book represents the state-of-the-art of combinatorial optimization.

Book 24

A complete, highly accessible introduction to one of today's most exciting areas of applied mathematics One of the youngest, most vital areas of applied mathematics, combinatorial optimization integrates techniques from combinatorics, linear programming, and the theory of algorithms. Because of its success in solving difficult problems in areas from telecommunications to VLSI, from product distribution to airline crew scheduling, the field has seen a ground swell of activity over the past decade. Combinatorial Optimization is an ideal introduction to this mathematical discipline for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of discrete mathematics, computer science, and operations research. Written by a team of recognized experts, the text offers a thorough, highly accessible treatment of both classical concepts and recent results.
The topics include: Network flow problems Optimal matching Integrality of polyhedra Matroids NP-completeness Featuring logical and consistent exposition, clear explanations of basic and advanced concepts, many real-world examples, and helpful, skill-building exercises, Combinatorial Optimization is certain to become the standard text in the field for many years to come.

Vol 2

This book develops geometric techniques for proving the polynomial time solvability of problems in convexity theory, geometry, and, in particular, combinatorial optimization. It offers a unifying approach which is based on two fundamental geometric algorithms: the ellipsoid method for finding a point in a convex set and the basis reduction method for point lattices. This book is a continuation and extension of previous research of the authors for which they received the Fulkerson prize, awarded by the Mathematical Programming Society and the American Mathematical Society. The first edition of this book was received enthusiastically by the community of discrete mathematicians, combinatorial optimizers, operations researchers, and computer scientists. To quote just from a few reviews: "The book is written in a very grasping way, legible both for people who are interested in the most important results and for people who are interested in technical details and proofs." #manuscripta geodaetica#1