Customer Reviews

An Introduction to Linear Programming and Game Theory

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The first part of this book is a good introduction to linear programming and the simplex method. Easy reading, tries to give insight, and with lots of examples. My personal favorite when it comes to refreshing my intuition on duality and how simplex works.

Regarding the game theory material, it seems to be a little crowded. Don't expect any in-depth coverage there, but as a brief overview it might be appropriate.

After spending much of the summer reading and trying to learn linear programming on my own using this book, I feel that I'm qualified write this review.

This book suffers from persistent disorganization which I suspect is due to pressure put on the author to reduce the number of pages in the book as much as possible. Consequently, formatting shortcuts are taken wherever possible. Some of these shortcuts do not seriously inhibit learning this material.

But when one wishes to complete a problem which requires that you refer to a problem 2 chapters before; which requires that you refer to a problem one chapter before, and so on. And when a specific example refers to a problem two sections before, which refers to a table two sections before that, which...well you get the point. The reader is then required to focus more on what page what table is then on the material.

The other major difficulties with this book arise from the authors lack of good punctuation and his lack of emphasis (through formatting on the page itself) of important points, often contained deep within examples. Most of the topics of the first 5 chapters are taught in the form of an example. And so a single sentence within a half-page paragraph of information that is critical to understanding the problem at hand ought to be emphasized some how. Some people prefer bold such things, others prefer to center. Dr Thie prefers to have you reread a huge paragraph of information on a page you can't remember to find out if such and such number was required to be positive or negative.

That's my take. You get the picture. Don't buy this book unless your prof makes you.