Bernhard Korte

This comprehensive textbook on combinatorial optimization places special emphasis on theoretical results and algorithms with provably good performance, in contrast to heuristics. It is based on numerous courses on combinatorial optimization and specialized topics, mostly at graduate level. This book reviews the fundamentals, covers the classical topics (paths, flows, matching, matroids, NP-completeness, approximation algorithms) in detail, and proceeds to advanced and recent topics, some of which have not appeared in a textbook before. Throughout, it contains complete but concise proofs, and also provides numerous exercises and references. This sixth edition has again been updated, revised, and significantly extended. Among other additions, there are new sections on shallow-light trees, submodular function maximization, smoothed analysis of the knapsack problem, the (ln 4+?)-approximation for Steiner trees, and the VPN theorem. Thus, this book continues torepresent the state of the art of combinatorial optimization.

Dieses umfassende Lehrbuch über Kombinatorische Optimierung ist die deutsche Übersetzung der sechsten Auflage des Buches „Combinatorial Optimization – Theory and Algorithms". Es ist aus verschiedenen Vorlesungen unterschiedlichen Niveaus (angefangen im 3. Semester des Bachelorstudiengangs) hervorgegangen, die die Autoren an der Universität Bonn gehalten haben. Das Buch legt den Schwerpunkt auf theoretische Resultate und Algorithmen mit beweisbar guten Laufzeiten und Ergebnissen. Es werden vollständige Beweise, auch für viele tiefe und neue Sätze gegeben, von denen einige bisher in der Lehrbuchliteratur noch nicht erschienen sind. Ferner enthält das Buch zahlreiche Übungsaufgaben und umfassende Literaturangaben. Diese dritte deutsche Auflage wurde entsprechend der sechsten englischen Auflage aktualisiert, überarbeitet und ergänzt. Es gibt unter anderem neue Abschnitte zu seichten leichten Bäumen, der Maximierung submodularer Funktionen, geglätteter Analyse vom Knapsack-Problem, der (ln 4 + ?)-Approximation von Steinerbäumen und dem VPN Problem. Aus Besprechungen der englischen Auflagen:"This book on combinatorial optimization is a beautiful example of the ideal textbook." Operations Research Letters 33 (2005), p.216-217"… this very recommendable book documents the relevant knowledge on combinatorial optimization and records those problems and algorithms that define this discipline today. To read this is very stimulating for all the researchers, practitioners, and students interested in combinatorial optimization." OR News 19 (2003), p.42"...gives an excellent comprehensive view of the exciting field of combinatorial optimization." Zentralblatt MATH 1149.90126

This comprehensive textbook on combinatorial optimization places special emphasis on theoretical results and algorithms with provably good performance, in contrast to heuristics. It is based on numerous courses on combinatorial optimization and specialized topics, mostly at graduate level. This book reviews the fundamentals, covers the classical topics (paths, flows, matching, matroids, NP-completeness, approximation algorithms) in detail, and proceeds to advanced and recent topics, some of which have not appeared in a textbook before. Throughout, it contains complete but concise proofs, and also provides numerous exercises and references. This sixth edition has again been updated, revised, and significantly extended. Among other additions, there are new sections on shallow-light trees, submodular function maximization, smoothed analysis of the knapsack problem, the (ln 4+?)-approximation for Steiner trees, and the VPN theorem. Thus, this book continues torepresent the state of the art of combinatorial optimization.

Oh cieca cupidigia, oh ira folie, Che si ci sproni nella vita corta, E nell' eterna poi si mal c'immolle! o blind greediness and foolish rage, That in our fleeting life so goads us on And plunges us in boiling blood for ever! Dante, The Divine Comedy Inferno, XII, 17, 49/51. On an afternoon hike during the second Oberwolfach conference on Mathematical Programming in January 1981, two of the authors of this book discussed a paper by another two of the authors (Korte and Schrader [1981]) on approximation schemes for optimization problems over independence systems and matroids. They had noticed that in many proofs the hereditary property of independence systems and matroids is not needed: it is not required that every subset of a feasible set is again feasible. A much weaker property is sufficient, namely that every feasible set of cardinality k contains (at least) one feasible subset of cardinality k - 1. We called this property accessibility, and that was the starting point of our investigations on greedoids.

Questo libro di testo di ottimizzazione combinatoria pone in particolare risalto i risultati teorici e gli algoritmi che, al contrario delle euristiche, hanno una garanzia di avere buone prestazioni. Comprende una vasta scelta di argomenti e nasce come riferimento di diversi corsi di ottimizzazione combinatoria sia di base che di livello avanzato. Il libro contiene dimostrazioni complete (ma concise) anche di molti risultati avanzati, alcuni dei quali non sono mai apparsi prima in un libro. Vengono anche trattati molti dei temi di ricerca più attuali e sono riportati molti riferimenti alla letteratura. Quindi questo libro, traduzione della quarta edizione in lingua originale, rappresenta lo stato dell’arte dell’ottimizzazione combinatoria.

Now fully updated in a third edition, this is a comprehensive textbook on combinatorial optimization. It puts special emphasis on theoretical results and algorithms with provably good performance, in contrast to heuristics. The book contains complete but concise proofs, also for many deep results, some of which have not appeared in print before. Recent topics are covered as well, and numerous references are provided. This third edition contains a new chapter on facility location problems, an area which has been extremely active in the past few years. Furthermore there are several new sections and further material on various topics. New exercises and updates in the bibliography were added.