Introduction to Mathematical Programming: Applications and Algorithms, Volume 1 (with CD-ROM and Infotrac) [With CDROM and Infotrac]

The book is very good, brings loads of examples and exercises. It has also a sample version of LINGO, which is quite useful for Operational Researchers. The only hint I give is the following: if you have already the blue book OPERATIONS RESEARCH by the same author, forget about this one. The content is basically the same, except from two chapters.

As one of the previous reviewers noted this book offers no (very few to be accurate) proofs. While I would normally pounce on an author for neglecting proofs and rigor, Winston approach is rather refreshing and practical. It is like a tool shed filled with tools that one may use without completely understanding its composition. This book is very accessible to people who are not very mathematically apt and provides a gentle introduction for those advanced in mathematics. If you want a general introduction to LP and NLP before you dive into the meat and potatoes (rigor and proofs) or if you want to just pick up some methods to optimize operations related tasks, I highly recommends this book.

This isn't your regular review here, because I'm guessing we all "have" to buy this book when we take the course. This book is very helpful for students of all levels. I took it for an "operations research" class after more than 7 years of not studying any math. Still, the first few chapters offer a recap of algebra needed for the course. In the subsequent chapters, everything progresses slowly with lots of examples, (which is helpful if you miss a class or two). Good luck with the class using this book then.

P>Totally useless information is pounded into your skull with solutions to less than a third of the problems.<p>Good luck with this one. If it wasn't required to buy, I never would.

That's it - it's a very informative and thorough book, but it's software only works on older Operating systems.