33
votes
Accepted
Why is open source operations research software so far behind open source statistics and machine learning software?
As someone who uses a lot of commercial/open-source OR software and incidentally tried coding my own solver, the underlying question is that of continued funding and support.
As mentioned in another ...
- 4,068
28
votes
Are programming languages necessary/useful for operations research practitioner?
To go beyond prototyping a model, you will need a programming language.
Here is a non-exhaustive list :
Sometimes simply modeling and calling the solver won't suffice to handle complex problems. To ...
- 2,907
27
votes
Accepted
List of Implementations for common OR problems
Let's make an inventory of example code for each common OR problem?
Vehicle Routing Problem
OptaPlanner: explanation + videos - source code (capacitated, time windows, multiple depots, ...)
...
27
votes
OR Software Forums
Here is the augmented and updated list. This should be a good starting point for further improvements.
This list is very optimization-heavy (even the automatic differentiation software is most likely ...
- 12.8k
21
votes
How to avoid having your optimization models rusting?
I am in a similar situation, where we mainly solve this by providing the servers on which the algorithms are running. This allows us to frequently monitor the input data and solutions, as well as the ...
- 649
19
votes
Are programming languages necessary/useful for operations research practitioner?
In my opinion, programming languages are necessary as an OR practitioner. There are a number of reasons for this:
Data Input/Output often requires some programming language. Whether it’s reading in ...
- 3,449
19
votes
Why is open source operations research software so far behind open source statistics and machine learning software?
Disclaimer: although I work for Gurobi, the views in this post are entirely my own.
I believe there are a few reasons for this trend:
First of all, the industries were "born" in different ...
- 3,449
18
votes
How to avoid having your optimization models rusting?
Here are a couple lessons I've learned over the years on this problem. This is in addition to Tue Christensen's answer--there are lots of reasons your problem can "rust."
First, if you can formulate ...
- 811
17
votes
List of Implementations for common OR problems
A good place to start is COIN-OR, which aims to "create for mathematical software what the open literature is for mathematical theory".
You can also take a look at Google's OR-Tools. It contains many ...
- 521
16
votes
Why is open source operations research software so far behind open source statistics and machine learning software?
Update:
Since you updated your question might as well chip in, since I've worked with COIN-OR software a lot at the code level. In my experience, a lot of the open-source optimisation codebases (e.g. ...
- 11.9k
14
votes
Beginner friendly open source projects in O.R
VRPy is a python library for solving a range of vehicle routing problems.
It is open source and open to new contributors.
There are at least two ways to contribute:
solve one of the existing issues
...
- 12.8k
12
votes
List of Implementations for common OR problems
I would, for everything knapsack-like, always go to David Pisingers homepage. Here you can find very efficient codes for knapsack problems (COMBO), multiple-choice knapsack problems (Mcknap), and ...
- 6,212
12
votes
Accepted
Are there reusable formulations/heuristics shared with the community?
I try to publish all my O.R. code on my GitHub page.
There are both exact and heuristic algorithms.
I am learning about better coding practices every day, so there is no guarantee that code I ...
- 2,073
12
votes
Are programming languages necessary/useful for operations research practitioner?
There are quite a few good answers here. I'll mention one more thing (related to two previously mentioned issues, building a GUI and accessing data): data cleaning. This may mean a number of things: ...
- 37.4k
12
votes
Why is open source operations research software so far behind open source statistics and machine learning software?
Disclaimer: I do work for Fico/Xpress, one of the leading commercial optimization solver developers, but this is my own personal opinion.
I agree 100% with the comment about where the value is: the ...
- 301
11
votes
What's the use case of commercial optimizer when we have Tensorflow?
I'd say that you are comparing software packages with very different aims and capabilities. Tensorflow was developed to solve problems which involve (deep) neural nets. Mosek and gurobi on the other ...
- 2,727
10
votes
QA techniques for optimization problem coding
The following suggestion is conjecture (I don't do it myself) and certainly not guaranteed to prevent all possible errors. Develop your initial model, run it against multiple scenarios, and store the ...
- 37.4k
10
votes
How to implement a "generic" solver for scheduling problems?
As you mentioned about "scheduling/production planning problems", I refer it to manufacturing planning and detailed schedule. Also, I know that there are specific methods to solve other planning and ...
- 8,185
10
votes
Does The Modelling Software Make A Difference Regarding A Solution?
I did not want to answer here, but Alex challenged me :) I agree on all the benefits of using a modeling language (as Alex indicates) and totally on the importance of finding a "good" model (as Alex ...
- 5,889
10
votes
Beginner friendly open source projects in O.R
There are lots of projects at COIN-OR, many of which I'm sure would welcome contributions. You would need to discuss with the individual project developers what the best way to help would be, but one ...
- 321
10
votes
Accepted
Is there an open-source equivalent to LocalSolver?
The simple answer is no.
While I haven't used LocalSolver myself, I sell a solver that solves similar types of problems (Octeract Engine) so I get asked this type of question a lot for my own solver.
...
- 11.9k
9
votes
Are programming languages necessary/useful for operations research practitioner?
Agree with all the mentioned great answers, I also think general programming languages are necessary for the OR practitioners and would like to add the following points:
Applications: Beside the ...
- 8,582
9
votes
How to improve the quality of code in OR?
Unfortunately writing high quality OR code is beyond the reach of most academic settings. This is mainly because:
Writing high quality code is very time consuming.
The scope of OR code is much better ...
- 11.9k
9
votes
Beginner friendly open source projects in O.R
Here and here (list is generated by Github based on the tags on the open projects) you can find long lists of open operations research projects on Github. By clicking on the "Open Issues" ...
- 8,582
8
votes
How to avoid having your optimization models rusting?
This applies to Gurobi: I found that solver parameter tuning rarely helps (apart from picking the right method) and generally seem to make Gurobi perform worse when ...
- 1,122
8
votes
Are there reusable formulations/heuristics shared with the community?
This may be a related question: Why is the programming code of many algorithms not public in the OR community?
A recent example I've liked is this large-scale location modeling paper by Cordeau, ...
- 1,317
8
votes
YALMIP-like modeling environment in Python
Handiest optimization package in python is Pyomo(in my opinion). I recommend that because of the following specifications:
There is a google group ( in addition to se and or.se) that you can ask for ...
- 8,582
8
votes
YALMIP-like modeling environment in Python
I think the two most common are PuLP and Pyomo. Some commercial solvers also have dedicated Python packages, e.g., Gurobipy and docplex.
Related: I've formulated my optimization model; now what?
- 13k
8
votes
Accepted
YALMIP-like modeling environment in Python
Given you are a MATLAB+Yalmip user you may prefer Cvxpy. Cvxpy is particularly useful if you do nonlinear models. Mosek also includes 2 Python interfaces where the so called Fusion interface may be ...
- 2,946
8
votes
Accepted
How to improve the quality of code in OR?
Disclaimer: I have worked for 3 years as an optimization software developer at a utility company and now work for Gurobi.
Is the expectation for entry level positions, that the applicant is able to ...
- 3,449
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible