This book provides a basic, initial resource, introducing science and engineering students to the field of optimization. It covers three main areas: mathematical programming, calculus of variations and optimal control, highlighting the ideas and concepts and offering insights into the importance of optimality conditions in each area. It also systematically presents affordable approximation methods. Exercises at various levels have been included to support the learning process.

This book focuses on the development of approximation-related algorithms and their relevant applications. Individual contributions are written by leading experts and reflect emerging directions and connections in data approximation and optimization. Chapters discuss state of the art topics with highly relevant applications throughout science, engineering, technology and social sciences. Academics, researchers, data science practitioners, business analysts, social sciences investigators and graduate students will find the number of illustrations, applications, and examples provided useful. This volume is based on the conference Approximation and Optimization: Algorithms, Complexity, and Applications, which was held in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, June 29–30, 2017. The mix of survey and research content includes topics in approximations to discrete noisy data; binary sequences; design of networks and energy systems; fuzzy control; large scale optimization; noisy data; data-dependent approximation; networked control systems; machine learning ; optimal design; no free lunch theorem; non-linearly constrained optimization; spectroscopy.

This book documents the state of the art in combinatorial optimization, presenting approximate solutions of virtually all relevant classes of NP-hard optimization problems. The wealth of problems, algorithms, results, and techniques make it an indispensible source of reference for professionals. The text smoothly integrates numerous illustrations, examples, and exercises.

The articles in this proceedings volume reflect the current trends in the theory of approximation, optimization and mathematical economics, and include numerous applications. The book will be of interest to researchers and graduate students involved in functional analysis, approximation theory, mathematical programming and optimization, game theory, mathematical finance and economics.

This book is intended to be used as a textbook for graduate students studying theoretical computer science. It can also be used as a reference book for researchers in the area of design and analysis of approximation algorithms. Design and Analysis of Approximation Algorithms is a graduate course in theoretical computer science taught widely in the universities, both in the United States and abroad. There are, however, very few textbooks available for this course. Among those available in the market, most books follow a problem-oriented format; that is, they collected many important combinatorial optimization problems and their approximation algorithms, and organized them based on the types, or applications, of problems, such as geometric-type problems, algebraic-type problems, etc. Such arrangement of materials is perhaps convenient for a researcher to look for the problems and algorithms related to his/her work, but is difficult for a student to capture the ideas underlying the various algorithms. In the new book proposed here, we follow a more structured, technique-oriented presentation. We organize approximation algorithms into different chapters, based on the design techniques for the algorithms, so that the reader can study approximation algorithms of the same nature together. It helps the reader to better understand the design and analysis techniques for approximation algorithms, and also helps the teacher to present the ideas and techniques of approximation algorithms in a more unified way.