Introduction to optimization

As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, optimization is an important tool for making decisions related to a large set of problems in our daily lives and various fields of science. There are various components to an optimization problem, as we are going to discuss in the following subsections.

Goal or objective function

The process of optimization starts with defining a goal or an objective, such as monetary gain, a route or path, a schedule, items, and so on. Selecting the goal or objective depends heavily on the problem domain, as well as the specific problem we are trying to solve. In addition to the objective function, we also need to know whether we are maximizing or minimizing the objective function. Again, this also depends on the specific problem domain, as well as the objective function. For an optimization problem with cost as the objective function, our goal will most likely be to minimize it, whereas if our objective function...