Career: Undergraduate Units: 3 Term: Semester 2 Campus: North Terrace Contact: 42 hrs

of lectures and tutorials Available for Non-Award Study: Yes Pre-Requisite: MATHS 1012
or MATHS 2004 Incompatible: Cannot be presented with APP MTH 2008 Assessment:
Ongoing assessment 30%, exam 70% Syllabus:

Operations Research (OR) is the application of mathematical techniques and analysis to

problem solving in business and industry, in particular to carrying out more efficiently
tasks such as scheduling, or optimising the provision of services. OR is an interdisciplinary
topic drawing from mathematical modelling, optimisation theory, game theory, decision
analysis, statistics, and simulation to help make decisions in complex situations. This first
course in OR concentrates on mathematical modelling and optimisation: for example
maximising production capacity, or minimising risk. It focuses on linear optimisation
problems involving both continuous, and integer variables. The course covers a variety of
mathematical techniques for linear optimisation, and the theory behind them. It will also
explore the role of heuristics in such problems. Examples will be presented from important
application areas, such as the emergency services, telecommunications, transportation, and
manufacturing. Students will undertake a team project based on an actual Adelaide
problem. Topics covered are: formulating a linear program; the Simplex Method; duality
and Complementary slackness; sensitivity analysis; an interior point method; alternative
means to solve some linear and integer programs, such as primal-dual approaches methods
from a complete solution (such as Greedy Methods, and Simulated Annealing), methods
from a partial solution (such as Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm, and branch-and-bound).