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Discrete-Event Simulation and System Dynamics for Management Decision Making

Author: Sally Brailsford

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2014-03-31

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 1118762754

In recent years, there has been a growing debate, particularly in the UK and Europe, over the merits of using discrete-event simulation (DES) and system dynamics (SD); there are now instances where both methodologies were employed on the same problem. This book details each method, comparing each in terms of both theory and their application to various problem situations. It also provides a seamless treatment of various topics--theory, philosophy, detailed mechanics, practical implementation--providing a systematic treatment of the methodologies of DES and SD, which previously have been treated separately.

Markov Decision Processes

Author: Martin L. Puterman

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2014-08-28

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 1118625870

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The Wiley-Interscience Paperback Series consists of selected books that have been made more accessible to consumers in an effort to increase global appeal and general circulation. With these new unabridged softcover volumes, Wiley hopes to extend the lives of these works by making them available to future generations of statisticians, mathematicians, and scientists. "This text is unique in bringing together so many results hitherto found only in part in other texts and papers. . . . The text is fairly self-contained, inclusive of some basic mathematical results needed, and provides a rich diet of examples, applications, and exercises. The bibliographical material at the end of each chapter is excellent, not only from a historical perspective, but because it is valuable for researchers in acquiring a good perspective of the MDP research potential." —Zentralblatt fur Mathematik ". . . it is of great value to advanced-level students, researchers, and professional practitioners of this field to have now a complete volume (with more than 600 pages) devoted to this topic. . . . Markov Decision Processes: Discrete Stochastic Dynamic Programming represents an up-to-date, unified, and rigorous treatment of theoretical and computational aspects of discrete-time Markov decision processes." —Journal of the American Statistical Association

Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation

Author: Kenneth Train

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-07-06

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 0521766559

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This book describes the new generation of discrete choice methods, focusing on the many advances that are made possible by simulation. Researchers use these statistical methods to examine the choices that consumers, households, firms, and other agents make. Each of the major models is covered: logit, generalized extreme value, or GEV (including nested and cross-nested logits), probit, and mixed logit, plus a variety of specifications that build on these basics. Simulation-assisted estimation procedures are investigated and compared, including maximum stimulated likelihood, method of simulated moments, and method of simulated scores. Procedures for drawing from densities are described, including variance reduction techniques such as anithetics and Halton draws. Recent advances in Bayesian procedures are explored, including the use of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm and its variant Gibbs sampling. The second edition adds chapters on endogeneity and expectation-maximization (EM) algorithms. No other book incorporates all these fields, which have arisen in the past 25 years. The procedures are applicable in many fields, including energy, transportation, environmental studies, health, labor, and marketing.

Discrete Choice Analysis

Author: Moshe Ben-Akiva

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2018-04-20

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 0262536404

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Discrete Choice Analysis presents these results in such a way that they are fully accessible to the range of students and professionals who are involved in modelling demand and consumer behavior in general or specifically in transportation - whether from the point of view of the design of transit systems, urban and transport economics, public policy, operations research, or systems management and planning. The methods of discrete choice analysis and their applications in the modelling of transportation systems constitute a comparatively new field that has largely evolved over the past 15 years. Since its inception, however, the field has developed rapidly, and this is the first text and reference work to cover the material systematically, bringing together the scattered and often inaccessible results for graduate students and professionals. Discrete Choice Analysis presents these results in such a way that they are fully accessible to the range of students and professionals who are involved in modelling demand and consumer behavior in general or specifically in transportation - whether from the point of view of the design of transit systems, urban and transport economics, public policy, operations research, or systems management and planning. The introductory chapter presents the background of discrete choice analysis and context of transportation demand forecasting. Subsequent chapters cover, among other topics, the theories of individual choice behavior, binary and multinomial choice models, aggregate forecasting techniques, estimation methods, tests used in the process of model development, sampling theory, the nested-logit model, and systems of models. Discrete Choice Analysis is ninth in the MIT Press Series in Transportation Studies, edited by Marvin Manheim.

Robust Discrete Optimization and Its Applications

Author: Panos Kouvelis

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-03-09

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 1475726201

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This book deals with decision making in environments of significant data un certainty, with particular emphasis on operations and production management applications. For such environments, we suggest the use of the robustness ap proach to decision making, which assumes inadequate knowledge of the decision maker about the random state of nature and develops a decision that hedges against the worst contingency that may arise. The main motivating factors for a decision maker to use the robustness approach are: • It does not ignore uncertainty and takes a proactive step in response to the fact that forecasted values of uncertain parameters will not occur in most environments; • It applies to decisions of unique, non-repetitive nature, which are common in many fast and dynamically changing environments; • It accounts for the risk averse nature of decision makers; and • It recognizes that even though decision environments are fraught with data uncertainties, decisions are evaluated ex post with the realized data. For all of the above reasons, robust decisions are dear to the heart of opera tional decision makers. This book takes a giant first step in presenting decision support tools and solution methods for generating robust decisions in a variety of interesting application environments. Robust Discrete Optimization is a comprehensive mathematical programming framework for robust decision making.

Decision and Discrete Mathematics

Author: I Hardwick

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 1996-01-01

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 0857099825

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This text offers a complete coverage in the Decision Mathematics module, also known as Discrete Mathematics, of the syllabuses of English A-level examination boards. it is a rewritten and modern version of Decision Mathematics (published by Ellis Horwood Ltd in 1986 for The Spode Group, so well known for its development of innovative mathematics teaching). It is also a suitable text for foundation and first year undergraduate courses in qualitative studies or operational research, or for access courses for students needing strengthening in mathematics, or for students who are moving into mathematics from another subject discipline.Compact and concise, it reflects the combined teaching skills and experience of its authors who know exactly what mathematics must be learnt at the readership level today. The text is built up in modular fashion, explaining concepts used in decision mathematics and related operational research, and electronics. It emphasises an understanding of techniques and algorithms, which it relates to real life situations and working problems that will apply throughout future working careers. Clear explanations of algorithms and all concepts Plentiful worked examples, clear diagrams Many exercises (with answers for self-study)

Bayesian Heuristic Approach to Discrete and Global Optimization

Author: Jonas Mockus

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-03-09

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 1475726279

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Bayesian decision theory is known to provide an effective framework for the practical solution of discrete and nonconvex optimization problems. This book is the first to demonstrate that this framework is also well suited for the exploitation of heuristic methods in the solution of such problems, especially those of large scale for which exact optimization approaches can be prohibitively costly. The book covers all aspects ranging from the formal presentation of the Bayesian Approach, to its extension to the Bayesian Heuristic Strategy, and its utilization within the informal, interactive Dynamic Visualization strategy. The developed framework is applied in forecasting, in neural network optimization, and in a large number of discrete and continuous optimization problems. Specific application areas which are discussed include scheduling and visualization problems in chemical engineering, manufacturing process control, and epidemiology. Computational results and comparisons with a broad range of test examples are presented. The software required for implementation of the Bayesian Heuristic Approach is included. Although some knowledge of mathematical statistics is necessary in order to fathom the theoretical aspects of the development, no specialized mathematical knowledge is required to understand the application of the approach or to utilize the software which is provided. Audience: The book is of interest to both researchers in operations research, systems engineering, and optimization methods, as well as applications specialists concerned with the solution of large scale discrete and/or nonconvex optimization problems in a broad range of engineering and technological fields. It may be used as supplementary material for graduate level courses.

Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation

Author: Kenneth Train

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-01-13

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 9780521017152

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Table of contents

Methods for Decision Making in an Uncertain Environment

Author: Jaime Gil-Aluja

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 471

ISBN-13: 9814415766

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This book contains a selection of the papers presented at the XVII SIGEF Congress. It presents fuzzy logic, neural networks and other intelligent techniques applied to economic and business problems. This book is very useful for researchers and graduate students aiming to introduce themselves to the field of quantitative techniques for overcoming uncertain environments. The contributors are experienced scholars of different countries who offer real world applications of these mathematical techniques.

Operations Research and Decision Aid Methodologies in Traffic and Transportation Management

Author: Martine Labbe

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-06-29

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 3662035146

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Every one relies on some kind of transportation system nearly every day. Go ing to work, shopping, dropping children at school and many other cultural or social activities imply leaving home, and using some form of transportation, which we expect tobe eflicient and reliable. Of course, efliciency and reliabil ity do not occur by chance, but require careful and often relatively complex planning by transportation system managers, both in the public and private sectors. It has long been recognized that mathematics, and, more specifically, op erations research is an important tool of this planning process. However, the range of skills required to cover both fields, even partially, is very large, and the opportunities to gather people with this very diverse expertise are too few. The organization of the NATO Advanced Studies Institute on "Opera tions Research and Decision Aid Methodologies in Traflic and Transportation Management" in March 1997 in Balatonfüred, Hungary, was therefore more than welcome and the group of people that gathered for a very studious two weeks on the shores of the beautiful lake Balaton did really enjoy the truly multidisciplinary and high scientific level of the meeting. The purpose of the present volume is to report, in a chronological order, the various questions that were considered by the lecturers and the' students at the institute. After a general introduction to the topic, the first week focused on issues related to traflic modeling, mostly in an urban context.