Operations research

From Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium

Originally introduced in a military context, operations research applied quantitative methods, especially of statistics, to developing optimal solutions to challenges in military operations. Some of the early areas of concentration were anti-submarine warfare and the aiming of anti-aircraft artillery.

As the field developed, it began to introduce methods from other quantitative fields, and develop its own toolkit. ^[1] Optimization techniques were key, coming from mathematics, economics, game theory. Extensive use was made of techniques such as linear programming, nonlinear programming and dynamic programming.

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