Ebook: Mathematical Methods in Systems, Optimization, and Control: Festschrift in Honor of J. William Helton

This volume is dedicated to Bill Helton on the occasion of his sixty fifth birthday. It contains biographical material, a list of Bill's publications, a detailed survey of Bill's contributions to operator theory, optimization and control and 19 technical articles. Most of the technical articles are expository and should serve as useful introductions to many of the areas which Bill's highly original contributions have helped to shape over the last forty odd years. These include interpolation, Szegö limit theorems, Nehari problems, trace formulas, systems and control theory, convexity, matrix completion problems, linear matrix inequalities and optimization.

The book should be useful to graduate students in mathematics and engineering, as well as to faculty and individuals seeking entry level introductions and references to the indicated topics. It can also serve as a supplementary text to numerous courses in pure and applied mathematics and engineering, as well as a source book for seminars.

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This book on constrained optimization is novel in that it fuses these themes: • use examples to introduce general ideas; • engage the student in spreadsheet computation; • survey the uses of constrained optimization;. • investigate game theory and nonlinear optimization, • link the subject to economic reasoning, and • present the requisite mathematics. Blending these themes makes constrained optimization more accessible and more valuable. It stimulates the student’s interest, quickens the learning process, reveals connections to several academic and professional fields, and deepens the student’s grasp of the relevant mathematics. The book is designed for use in courses that focus on the applications of constrained optimization, in courses that emphasize the theory, and in courses that link the subject to economics