This unit teaches student skills and techniques that are used to answer practical questions arising in Operations Research.  These questions typically also arise in Engineering, Management, Finance, Economics and Teaching.  For example, "How long do I expect to have to wait for the next bus?" "How should I balance the products my factory makes, to maximise my profit?" and "What is the best way to send electricity from this set of power stations to these homes, to minimise power loss?"

Operations Research includes the solution of  optimisation problems, modelling and simulation.  This unit introduces students to methods in modelling stochastic systems as Discrete Time Markov Chains and analysing their expected behaviour.  It also gives students the tools such as the Simplex Method, to solve Lin-ear Programming Optimisation and Transportation problems.  Further the students will be taught methods in simulation of these systems, to reveal how different behaviours can emerge.

The major practical tools and theoretical results in this unit rely on some theoretical concepts in probability, such as fundamental laws of probability, the Binomial and Geometric distributions and initial topics in Graph Theory: these will be covered as they are needed.  Students will learn how to competently use MATLAB and other appropriate software for the derivation of the numerical solutions.