Dynamic programming has often been dismissed because it suffers from "the curse of dimensionality." In fact, there are three curses of dimensionality when you deal with the high-dimensional problems that typically arise in operations research (the state space, the outcome space and the action space).

This book brings together dynamic programming, math programming, simulation and statistics to solve complex problems using practical techniques that scale to real-world applications. The methods in this book were motivated by work on very large-scale applications undertaken by CASTLE Lab - freight transportation companies, military operations, finance, health and energy. More than academic exercises, software using these techniques is running at the largest trucking companies and railroads in the United States.

Although the theory behind these techniques is deep, the methods themselves are highly intuitive and often mimic how people solve problems on their own. Written at a level that is accessible to advanced undergraduates and masters students, the techniques can be used by students and practitioners with an introductory background in probability and statistics, and (for some applications) linear programming.

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