Review

Author(s): G. A. Garreau
Review by: G. A. Garreau
Source: Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series D (The Statistician), Vol. 36, No. 1
(1987), p. 63
Published by: Wiley for the Royal Statistical Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2988280
Accessed: 27-06-2016 03:02 UTC

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 Book Reviews 63

Analyse numerique des equations differentielles

M. CROUZEIX & A. L. MIGNOT
Masson, Paris, 1984
viii+ 171 pp.
ISBN 2 225 77341 6

This scholarly work gives a formal account of the theory behind the practical methods of
polynomial fitting, numerical integration and numerical approximation to the solutions of
ordinary differential equations. The methods dealt with are in general use, with or without
computers, but do not include solutions in series, such as those of Frobenius and Picard. The
style and presentation are of a very high standard.

G. A. GARREAU Streatham, London, U.K

Linear Programming, an introduction

BRUCE R. FEIRING
Sage Publications, Beverley Hills, 1986
pp. 91, ?4.95
ISBN 0 8039 2850 5

This book is monograph number 60 in a series called Quantitative Applications in the Social
Sciences. Many of the other titles in the series (listed on the back cover) would be of interest to
social scientists and to those who teach statistics or operational research to social science
students.
This book has many good points, but there are a number of items and sections which should
have been included to make it even better, without significantly increasing the (modest) number
of pages.
There are six main chapters which are generally very readable and do not require mathematics
beyond 0-level. The introduction (Chapter 1) defines a linear program (LP); mentions some LP
terminology and gives a two-variable example. In Chapter 2, examples with up to six variables
are modelled, but not solved. Two important points are made about units and about naming the
objective function and constraints (e.g. supply constraint). However, the first omission occurs in
an example in which the optimum solution is quoted but the novice reader is left in the dark
about how it was obtained. Again, in Chapter 3, the graphical solution is introduced and iso-
profit lines are written about, but not drawn on the graph. Once more the optimum solution is
simply stated.
Chapter 4, on the Simplex method, is a much more solid piece of work. Here the various steps
in the method are carefully explained and later summarised. The fifth chapter, on sensitivity
(post-optimality) analysis, is also good and discusses both changes in the objection function
coefficients and changes in the 'right-hand-side constants' of the constraints. Computer solutions
to LP problems is the subject of Chapter 6. Here examples of input and output from a
University of Minnesota program called LPKODE are shown, including sensitivity analysis.
There are two appendices following Chapter 6 which provide a more rigorous mathematical
development of (1) the properties of LP problems and (2) LP methods for production schedul-
ing.
Now for the other omissions! Firstly, this book has no Index. The subject of LP contains a
large number of terms which are either specific to LP or which have a special meaning when one
is discussing this type of problem. Although most of the terms introduced are defined in the text,
it would have required little further effort to provide an index of at least 100 terms. Secondly, no
reference is made in the book to any of the 28 references listed at the end of the book.
Thirdly, and most important of all, there are no applications or examples given which fall
under the umbrella of the social sciences, e.g. political science, psychology, sociology or
anthropology. Yet the series editor, in his introduction, states that the objective of this
monograph is 'to encourage social scientists to add LP methodology to their training'. How this
is achieved by examples such as production scheduling, trim loss, transportation and dieting is
beyond this reviewer.
Yet, applications from the social sciences could easily have been included. For example it is
well known that the two person zero-sum game may be formulated as a LP. In Burghes & Wood

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