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Jensen, Paul A., Jonathan F. Bard. 2002. Operations Research Models and Methods.

Article Excerpt
JENSEN, PAUL A., JONATHAN F. BARD. 2002. Operations Research Models and Methods. John Wiley and Sons, New York. 675 pp. $115.95.

As the title Operations Research Models and Methods implies, the authors of this introductory operations research (OR) textbook take an approach that is somewhat different from that of authors of other OR texts; they are strict in separating the art and practice of modeling problems from the methods used to solve the models. Jensen and Bard are true to this separation from the beginning of the book to the end and in the extensive supplementary materials provided on a CD and on a Web site. Their approach makes the book useful for undergraduate engineering courses, undergraduate applied mathematics courses, first-year graduate engineering courses, and MBA courses. In the first and fourth cases, instructors would probably emphasize the chapters dealing with models, whereas in the second and third cases, instructors would likely shift their emphasis to the methods chapters.

In the introductory chapter, Jensen and Bard discuss how to map real-world situations into problem classes, how to select an appropriate model (or models), and finally how to choose a particular solution method for the selected model. They do a nice job of setting the stage for the rest of this book.

As in most introductory OR texts, linear...