Linear programming (LP), modeling, and optimization are very much the fundamentals of OR, and no academic program is complete without them. No matter how highly developed one's LP skills are, however, if a fine appreciation for modeling isn't developed to make the best use of those skills, then the truly 'best solutions' are often not realized, and efforts go wasted.

Katta Murty studied LP with George Dantzig, the father of linear programming, and has written the graduate-level solution to that problem. While maintaining the rigorous LP instruction required, Murty's new book is unique in his focus on developing modeling skills to support valid decision making for complex real world problems. He describes the approach as 'intelligent modeling and decision making' to emphasize the importance of employing the best expression of actual problems and then applying the most computationally effective and efficient solution technique for that model.