IND E 513 Homework 1

Due at the beginning of class, 1:00 pm on Wed., October 8, 2014

Reading Assignment: Please read all of Chapter 1 and start Chapter 2 in the textbook.
Problem 1 Problem 1.2 from the textbook. (Hint: to show the sum is piecewise linear, it is
enough to just consider two piecewise linear functions.)
Problem 2 Problem 1.5 from the textbook.
Problem 3 Problem 1.6 from the textbook.
Problem 4 Problem 1.16 from the textbook.
Problem 5 Consider the linear program
P (A, b, c)

min c0 x
Ax = b
x 0.

Suppose x is an optimal solution of P (A, b, c). Now consider the following modification of P (A, b, c).
P (A, b, c)

min c0 x
Ax = b
x 0.

Note that the only difference between the above two problems is in their objective functions. Suppose x is an optimal solution of P (A, b, c). Let be the angle between vectors (
c c) and (
x x).
0
Explain why is at least 90 . (Hint: recall from undergraduate courses how the inner product of
two vectors relates to the angle between them.)
Problem 6 Postal workers at the local post office are scheduled for 5 days on followed by 2 days
off, and this schedule is repeated every week. Thus, a worker has the same two days off each week,
and these days are consecutive. The demand for workers is given in the table below. This demand
must be met or exceeded on each day (These numbers represent the total number of workers who
are working that day). The cost of employing a worker is $275 per weekday, $300 on a Saturday,
and $325 on Sunday. (Hint: Read scheduling example on pages 11-12.)

Day
Mon Tue
Demand 17
13

Wed
15

Thu Fri
19
14

Sat Sun
16
11

Formulate a linear program that will minimize the total cost of employing postal workers satisfying
the above demand. (In practice, your formulation should be an integer program but you can ignore
that for now.)
Problem 7 Consider the following simple linear program:
min c1 x1 + c2 x2 + c3 x3
x 1 + x2 1
x1 + 2x2 3
x1 0, x2 0, x3 0
Find the optimal value and the set of optimal solutions for the following values of c: c = (1, 0, 1),
c = (0, 1, 0) and c = (0, 0, 1).