[melbourne-pug] python and operations research

[John Thornton]

                 I am new to python. I am studying some computer programming certificates including some python. I haven't got far into the python yet though. My broad intent is to use python for operations reserach problems. I have a particular interest in inventory models and the EOQ [Economic Order Quantity] formulae. When I did OR at university [mid 1990's] I had one software package in DOS: Management Scientist which came with my Anderson/Sweeney/Williams "Intro to Management Science" textbook. 

                 So, today I set up a Vmware Ubuntu 10.10 box and installed PuLP and the glpk solver. It has all passed the tests. [excluding of course gurobi tests etc because those solvers aren't there.] 

                  I am very reluctant to use any closed-source software for OR; it is a discipline that demands too much flexibility for commercial options. 

                  FYI I left school in the early 1990's with absolute computer illiteracy. I could not put a disk in the disk drive. I was in a nasty, nasty era where you never knew where you stood with computers. In 1980 things were clearcut. There was no home PC market in 1980 so you could study computers without needing one at home. But in the early 1990's things got nasty. You were expected to know how to use computers to pass VCE subjects. Yet nobody taught you a thing about computers. I had to drop a subject that I was getting straight A's for [geography] because year 12 would have had me creating heaps of pie graphs with a computer. Yet who on earth was going to teach me how to do those? In short people like myself were "technologised" out of subjects. I never really got a handle on computers until 2007[!]. It is a long way back from leaving school computer illiterate; there was the vicious circle of "I need to be more confident with computers to learn about them but I need to learn them to get more confident". 

                 Anyone else on this list into Python OR? Is PuLP with glpk a good way to go? What libraries does python have in OR? 

                Regards
               Andrew Thornton 

                  

                

                  

                   

                    
 		 	   		  
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