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Network Flows: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications
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Author: Ravindra K. Ahuja, Thomas L. Magnanti, James B. Orlin
List Price: $116.00
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 013617549X
Publisher: Prentice Hall (18 February, 1993)
Edition: Hardcover
Sales Rank: 78,954
Average Customer Rating: 4.57 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 5 out of 5
Great book for Network Theory and Application
This book contains a lot of great algorithms for network flow theory and it also contains many of the great applications, which are very useful in practice. This book is very completed. Personally, I learn a lot of new things about Multi commodity Flow, which are the use of Lagrangian Relaxation, Column generation, Resource allocation techniques for solving multi commodity flow. There are also the good chapters in Convex cost flow and Generalized Flow and good appendix in complexity. Beside this book is very easy to read and understand. It is a great idea to have if you are in OR or IE major. :)
Rating: 3 out of 5
PLEASE, write a corrected edition!
First of all, I am not surprised that the book
got so many good reviews: at first look, it is truly
impressive, and it is clearly a work of love. I was
looking forward to teaching from it.It is quite clear from the reviews though, that the
reviewers have not **used** it for teaching; they may
have browsed it at most. The first disappointments came very soon in the course I
taught. The biggest flaw of the book is the really bad style
in which the proofs are written. They manage to be seemingly
overflowing with explanation, and at the same time difficult
to understand. They gloss over many details: if the teacher
tries to skip these, an alert student could easily make
him/her look pretty silly. One case in point is the proof of the label correcting
algorithm's correctness starting on page 136. I knew this
material from before, so I thought preparing class from
here would be a breeze. I was wrong: after going back to
my notes, and breaking up the mess into several simple
claims did I manage to make notes from which I could teach.
Whoever missed the class was helpless, when they looked
for explanation in the book. I only remark, that all classes that I taught from this book
were at some of the top 10 OR depts at the US... so this is
hardly the students' fault. Many exercises are wrong as well, and although the authors
claim that they will try to fix the mistakes, they hardly ever
reply to reader's comments, as some of my fellow professors
told me. I can only compare the style of the exposition to the
later written Combinatorial Optimization book by
Cunningham et. al. There is a WORLD of difference.
One can try to look up for instance, the proof
for the label correcting algorithm: the proof in the
Ahuja et. al book is practically creaking at the joints,
while in Cunningham et. al. it flows lucidly.
I suspect that the authors of the latter book wrote it, since
they were unhappy with this one; one can hardly be surprised. On the positive side, the plethora of applications presented
is truly amazing, and the exercises (when correct) are excellent. To sum it up: A good book, which could have become a great one,
but have not; one which is very useful, but at the
same time very hard to use... I think the community would thank
the authors for a second, revised edition, that would fix
all the mistakes, and all those terrible proofs. A final word: this text received the prestigious Lanchester
prize. One may surmise that giving prizes to a textbook
would be best done maybe after 5 years, after a book proved
its worth in actual teaching in the trenches,
so to speak, and NOT based on the first impression that the
jury gets.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Bible for Network flows
Go for it! Other books do give algorithms but some of them have sloopy versions of the algorithms. This book not only gives the efficient versions of algorithms but also gives pseudo code for all of them. And the treatment of the subject itself is flawless. The theory leading to algorithms is very important to understand the algorithms and the authors do an excellent job. The way the book is organised the pictures and examples - everything is perfect. The exercises are not just number crunching problems but real good problems which require lot of thinking.
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