TDA206/DIT370, Period 3, 2016: Discrete Optimization

Instructor

Assistants

Announcement

Lecture Notes

The lectures and evaluation will be based on the teacher's lecture notes. Therefore, you do not need to buy any book, but the lecture notes are based on three books, which you can read only if you are eager to know more: The third one is free to download from the authors’ homepage.

Lecture Sessions

Here is a tentative schedule for the sessions:

Book a consultation time by email when you need special help.

Brief Course Description and Goals

This course is intended to provide a basic understanding about mathematical optimization and its applications. In optimization problems, the main goal is to obtain the maximum (or minimum) amount of an objective value by a proper selection of a number of individual variables. This goal is desirable in a large variety of applications, but may be difficult to achieve. In this course, you learn how to use mathematical disciplines to treat optimization problems. Examples from different application domains will be presented. In particular, optimization problems with discrete-valued parameters are discussed.

After the course you should be able to:

Prerequisites

Elementary Linear algebra, algorithms, elementary mathematical analysis, elementary MATLAB. Further knowledge of graphs will be helpful. However, sufficient explanation for the graph-theoretic concepts will be provided when required.

Grading

Grading is based on hand-in exercises and a final take-home exam :

Exercises

Each set of exercises should be submitted before the announced deadline. Notice that there is NO possible resubmission after the deadline .
Exercise Submission
Solutions to the hand-in exercises must be submitted individually (not in groups!). Include your name, personal number, and email address in your submission and all attachments (We may want to print them). We use the "Fire" system to receive your assignments. Register yourself here. The direct address is "https://xdat09.ce.chalmers.se/2016/lp3/do/".

A check list for your submissions:

Final Examination

Download the exam HERE. The exam solution HERE.

The exam is in the take-home format. The question sheet will be released at 9:00 am, on Thursday, March 17 on the course homepage. The answers must be written/printed on paper and personally handed to me no later than 16:00 on Friday March 18. I will be sitting in my office, room 6476 during the normal working hours.

As there is no scheduled re-exam, you can improve your grade by an individual extra assignment that addresses weak points. You can express interest before 15 April, and then the given assignment must be finished before the end of period 4. Note that this does not apply to GU students, according to GU regulations.

General Rules and Policies

Read them carefully and take them very seriously.

Seeking Help

It may happen that you have read and understood the material but still cannot manage an exercise. This is not necessarily a bad sign. Problem solving requires own thinking, trying different ways, detours, and so on. We are happy to help, but make a serious effort first, and specify your difficulties.

A good question is:
"I have tried approach X, but I got stuck at this point Y, because of Z. Can you give further advice?"

Bad questions are:
"Can you give me a hint where to start?"
"This is my idea - am I on the right track?"
"Where can I read more about the exercise?"