Okay, so that was what I want to say for this particular week. Now I want to spend a few time to talk about what we will do in this particular course. We still have five weeks to go, what do we want to do? So, we have done about course overview, then we will use three different weeks to talk about three different kinds of mathematical programming. We'll talk about linear programming, integer programming, and nonlinear programming. So we will tell you when is a good time to use this kind of mathematical programming. What should we do in formulating these kind of mathematical programs? What should you take care about? And all kinds of applications, successful stories about these kinds of mathematical programming. We will also arrange some time for our TA to teach you how to use computers to solve mathematical programs. In this particular course, because this is an introductory course, we will use a very simple tool that everybody knows how to use, to solve these mathematical programs. This may not be possible to be applied to a real world, very large scale problems because the solver we use in this course is simple, but it helps you to learn the materials. Then, in week 5, there is a case study, you can consider it as some kind of larger problems. I will tell you what's the problem, I will tell you how we tackle these problems. How we talk with the business person, how we formulate a mathematical program. What's the process for us to choose the type of mathematical programming we use? And what's the process for us to go back and forth, to interact with the company. And what's the result of implementing this system, okay? So that will be a real case. And then finally, in week 6, we will have some concluding remarks and tell you, if you want to learn more, what we have and what you may do. So, in this particular course, and this is the first course in this series. In this course, we don't talk about algorithms. We don't talk about very difficult mathematical theories. We talk about models and applications. We talk about their basic principles. We help you categorize programs into linear, nonlinear, integer, and so on. We give you some experience about solving problems with Microsoft Excel. With that, you have a better way to learn the materials because you may really see that a formulated problem is solved, and then you'll see the solution presented in front of you. And that's a very good learning experience. We'll go through cases, applications, and give you business implications about all the things we may do with mathematical programming. Hopefully, eventually, we'll successfully let you know when to use operations research, and when not to use operations research. In this course, we will give you all kinds of applications. They should be some good positions, good situations for you to apply operations research. And hopefully after this course, you'll know what's the underlying assumptions about these models. You'll know what's the difficulty about applying these models. Then you'll know, when it's not a good time to use operations research. If you want to keep going with us still, we have some prerequisites. But for this course, it is designed for beginners. So the only prerequisite, I believe, first, is high school mathematics mainly algebra, you need to be able to understand what do we mean by x plus y. What do we mean by 2x plus y? What do we mean by sum i from 1 to nxi? Something like this. If you understand these notations, you're done, I mean you're okay, you're fine in this course. Of course, you also need to get some ideas about high school English, at least, you'll need to be able to understand what the nonsense I'm talking about. If you feel that's fine, that's good enough. So, pretty much, that's all I have for this week. If you're still interested in this operations research, just try to learn it all together in this course. That's it, thank you. [MUSIC]
