Evaluating Mathematical Programming Techniques : Proceedings of a Conference Held at the National Bureau of Standards Boulder, Colorado January 5-6, 1981

Opening Address -- 1. Design and Use of Problem Generators and Hand Selected Test Cases -- Test problems for computational experiments -- issues and techniques -- NETGEN-II: A system for generating structured network-based mathematical programming test problems -- The definition and generation of geometrically random linear constraint sets -- Construction of nonlinear programming test problems with known solution characteristics -- A comparison of real-world linear programs and their randomly generated analogs -- 2. Nonlinear Optimization Codes and Empirical Tests -- Evidence of fundamental difficulties in nonlinear optimization code comparisons -- A statistical review of the Sandgren-Ragsdell comparative study -- A methodological approach to testing of NLP-software -- 3. Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization -- A computational comparison of five heuristic algorithms for the Euclidean traveling salesman problem -- Implementing an algorithm: performance considerations and a case study -- Which options provide the quickest solutions -- An integer programming test problem generator -- 4. Comparative Computational Studies in Mathematical Programming -- Remarks on the evaluation of nonlinear programming algorithms -- Comments on evaluating algorithms and codes for mathematical programming -- Some comments on recent computational testing in mathematical programming -- Remarks on the comparative experiments of Miele, Sandgren and Schittkowski -- 5. Testing Methodologies -- In pursuit of a methodology for testing mathematical programming software -- Nonlinear programming methods with linear least squares subproblems -- An outline for comparison testing of mathematical software -- illustrated by comparison testings of software which solves systems of nonlinear equations -- A portable package for testing minimization algorithms -- 6. Approaches to Software Testing from Other Disciplines -- Transportable test procedures for elementary function software -- Testing and evaluation of statistical software -- TOOLPACK -- An integrated system of tools for mathematical software development -- Overview of testing numerical software -- The application of Halstead’s software science difficulty measure to a set of programming projects -- 7. Special Topics -- Mathematical programming algorithms in APL -- 8. Advances in Networks -- Solution strategies and algorithm behavior in large-scale network codes -- Recursive piecewise-linear approximation methods for nonlinear networks -- Computational testing of assignment algorithms -- 9. On Establishing a Group for Testing Mathematical Programs -- 10. Appendix -- Conference program -- List of participants -- A model for the performance evaluation in comparative studies -- Remarks on the comparative evaluation of algorithms for mathematical programming problems -- Comments on a testing center -- Systematic approach for comparing the computational speed of unconstrained minimization algorithms -- The evaluation of optimization software for engineering design.