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October 31, 2003

Third Exam Review. The third exam is Wednesday, November 5, 2003.

You may use a calculator on the exam, but I do not believe it will be necessary. You will not have any notes or formulas available to you. Here is a summary of topics covered in the third chapter. There may be other topics not listed here. You are responsible for all material covered in class and on homework.

• Section 3.1 This section was entirely about the graphing of a system of linear inequalities. You may need to be able to match a system of linear inequalities to a given graph or graph such a system. You should know what feasible and infeasible, bounded and unbounded, and convex and not convex mean. You need to be able to identify what a vertex is and what its coordinates are. There may be a story problem as well that requires you to set up a system of linear equations.

• Section 3.2 Two-variable linear programming. You should understand what an objective function is. You need to know the Fundamental Theorem of Linear Programming. You should understand how to handle problems with unbounded regions. You should be able to solve problems graphically and there may be a story problem.

• Section 3.3 Simplex Method. You need to be able to set up a simplex tableau. You should know how to choose a pivot row and pivot column. You should understand what the values of the $x$ variables are from an intermediate tableau or the final tableau. You should understand what a slack variable is. You should be able to complete a simplex problem from start to finish. You should understand when the simplex method shows us the problem has an optimal solution and when it tells us the problem has no solution.

There will likely be only a single problem where you will need to do a complete solution to a simplex method problem start to finish, and that problem will likely be all or nothing and be worth 5-10 points. Most of the other problems will be similar to the homework and will probably require you to take one or two steps at a time.

The exam is not yet completed, but I anticipate the test looking very similar to the homework problems, perhaps, with some true/false, multiple choice or matching questions as well.