Linear programming

Linear programming (LP, also called linear optimization) is a method to achieve the best outcome (such as maximum profit or lowest cost) in a mathematical model whose requirements are represented by linear relationships. Linear programming is a special case of mathematical programming (also known as mathematical optimization). Linear programming (LP, also called linear optimization) is a method to achieve the best outcome (such as maximum profit or lowest cost) in a mathematical model whose requirements are represented by linear relationships. Linear programming is a special case of mathematical programming (also known as mathematical optimization). More formally, linear programming is a technique for the optimization of a linear objective function, subject to linear equality and linear inequality constraints. Its feasible region is a convex polytope, which is a set defined as the intersection of finitely many half spaces, each of which is defined by a linear inequality. Its objective function is a real-valued affine (linear) function defined on this polyhedron. A linear programming algorithm finds a point in the polyhedron where this function has the smallest (or largest) value if such a point exists. Linear programs are problems that can be expressed in canonical form as where x represents the vector of variables (to be determined), c and b are vectors of (known) coefficients, A is a (known) matrix of coefficients, and ( ⋅ ) T {displaystyle (cdot )^{mathrm {T} }} is the matrix transpose. The expression to be maximized or minimized is called the objective function (cTx in this case). The inequalities Ax ≤ b and x ≥ 0 are the constraints which specify a convex polytope over which the objective function is to be optimized. In this context, two vectors are comparable when they have the same dimensions. If every entry in the first is less-than or equal-to the corresponding entry in the second, then it can be said that the first vector is less-than or equal-to the second vector. Linear programming can be applied to various fields of study. It is widely used in mathematics, and to a lesser extent in business, economics, and for some engineering problems. Industries that use linear programming models include transportation, energy, telecommunications, and manufacturing. It has proven useful in modeling diverse types of problems in planning, routing, scheduling, assignment, and design. The problem of solving a system of linear inequalities dates back at least as far as Fourier, who in 1827 published a method for solving them, and after whom the method of Fourier–Motzkin elimination is named. In 1939 a linear programming formulation of a problem that is equivalent to the general linear programming problem was given by the Soviet economist Leonid Kantorovich, who also proposed a method for solving it. It is a way he developed, during World War II, to plan expenditures and returns in order to reduce costs of the army and to increase losses imposed on the enemy. Kantorovich's work was initially neglected in the USSR. About the same time as Kantorovich, the Dutch-American economist T. C. Koopmans formulated classical economic problems as linear programs. Kantorovich and Koopmans later shared the 1975 Nobel prize in economics. In 1941, Frank Lauren Hitchcock also formulated transportation problems as linear programs and gave a solution very similar to the later simplex method. Hitchcock had died in 1957 and the Nobel prize is not awarded posthumously. During 1946–1947, George B. Dantzig independently developed general linear programming formulation to use for planning problems in US Air Force. In 1947, Dantzig also invented the simplex method that for the first time efficiently tackled the linear programming problem in most cases. When Dantzig arranged a meeting with John von Neumann to discuss his simplex method, Neumann immediately conjectured the theory of duality by realizing that the problem he had been working in game theory was equivalent. Dantzig provided formal proof in an unpublished report 'A Theorem on Linear Inequalities' on January 5, 1948. In the post-war years, many industries applied it in their daily planning. Dantzig's original example was to find the best assignment of 70 people to 70 jobs. The computing power required to test all the permutations to select the best assignment is vast; the number of possible configurations exceeds the number of particles in the observable universe. However, it takes only a moment to find the optimum solution by posing the problem as a linear program and applying the simplex algorithm. The theory behind linear programming drastically reduces the number of possible solutions that must be checked.