In a relatively compact book, Diwekar manages to give detailed explanations of key methods in modern optimisation. These include simulated annealing and genetic algorithms. The former are inspired by ideas in statistical mechanics, and the latter by evolution.



Monte Carlo sampling is another important idea well described here. It uses a pseudo-random number generator that approximates a uniform distribution over [0,1] to do probabilistic analysis in the common case when analytic answers are unavailable.



The narrative gives the reader an appreciation of what problems these methods can be used against, and also of the computational complexity of each method.