Linear Programming and Combinatorial Optimization

Syllabus

Linear and integer programming problem, examples

Combinatorial geometry, polytopes and their minimal description, Minkowski-Weyl's theorem

Duality of linear programming, Farkas' lemma

Simplex method, pivoting rules

Polynomial algorithms for linear programming (overview)

Unimodularity, König's lemma, network flows

Weighted matchings in general graphs, Edmonds' algorithm

Matching polytope

Integer programming

Approximation algorithms

Matroids

Annotation

An introduction to mainly discrete optimisation is given. The lecture is centered around the theory of linear programming.