Finding Optimal Solutions
In this chapter, we’ll address various methods for finding the best outcome in a given situation. This is called optimization and usually involves either minimizing or maximizing an objective function. An objective function is a function with one or more arguments that returns a single scalar value, representing the cost or payoff for a given choice of parameters. The problems regarding minimizing and maximizing functions are actually equivalent to one another, so we’ll only discuss minimizing object functions in this chapter. Minimizing a function, 
, is equivalent to maximizing the 
function. More details on this will be provided when we discuss the first recipe.
The algorithms available to us for minimizing a given function depend on the nature of the function. For instance, a simple linear function containing one or more variables has different algorithms available compared to a non-linear function with many variables. The minimization...