Linear Optimization and Dualiyy: A Modern Exposition departs from convention in significant ways. Standard linear programming textbooks present the material in the order in which it was discovered. Duality is treated as a difficult add-on after coverage of formulation, the simplex method, and polyhedral theory. Students end up without knowing duality in their bones.
This text brings in duality in Chapter 1 and carries duality all the way through the exposition. Chapter 1 gives a general definition of duality that shows the dual aspects of a matrix as a column of rows and a row of columns. The proof of weak duality in Chapter 2 is shown via the Lagrangian, which relies on matrix duality. The first three LP formulation examples in Chapter 3 are classic primal-dual pairs including the diet problem and 2-person zero sum games.
For many engineering students, optimization is their first immersion in rigorous mathematics. Conventional texts assume a level of mathematical sophistication they don’t have. This text embeds dozens of reading tips and hundreds of answered questions to guide such students.