Peter Zörnig

This book is an introduction to nonlinear programming. It deals with the theoretical foundations and solution methods, beginning with the classical procedures and reaching up to “modern” methods like trust region methods or procedures for nonlinear and global optimization. A comprehensive bibliography including diverse web sites with information about nonlinear programming, in particular software, is presented. Without sacrificing the necessary mathematical rigor, excessive formalisms are avoided. Several examples, exercises with detailed solutions, and applications are provided, making the text adequate for individual studies.

The book is written for students from the fields of applied mathematics, engineering, economy, and computation.

The idea of the book is to present a text that is useful for both students of quantitative sciences and practitioners who work with univariate or multivariate probabilistic models. Since the text should also be suitable for self-study, excessive formalism is avoided though mathematical rigor is retained. A deeper insight into the topics is provided by detailed examples and illustrations. The book covers the standard content of a course in probability and statistics. However, the second edition includes two new chapters about distribution theory and exploratory data analysis. The first-mentioned chapter certainly goes beyond the standard material. It is presented to reflect the growing practical importance of developing new distributions. The second new chapter studies intensively one- and bidimensional concepts like assymetry, kurtosis, correlation and determination coefficients. In particular, examples are intended to enable the reader to take a critical look at the appropriateness of the geometrically motivated concepts.