Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled optimisation) or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criteria, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided … See more

Optimization problems can be divided into two categories, depending on whether the variables are continuous or discrete:
• An … See more

Fermat and Lagrange found calculus-based formulae for identifying optima, while Newton and Gauss proposed iterative methods for moving towards an optimum. See more

Feasibility problem
The satisfiability problem, also called the feasibility problem, is just the problem of finding any See more

Optimization problems are often expressed with special notation. Here are some examples:
Minimum and maximum value of a function
Consider the following notation:
$${\displaystyle \min _{x\in \mathbb {R} }\;\left(x^{2}+1\right)}$$ See more

• Convex programming studies the case when the objective function is convex (minimization) or concave (maximization) and the constraint set is See more

To solve problems, researchers may use algorithms that terminate in a finite number of steps, or iterative methods that converge to a solution (on some specified class of problems), or See more