The course we have designed integrates economic and management science models with computer science methods. The students will work in interdisciplinary teams and learn to use quantitative and logical methods for the task of attacking problems that are encountered in decision making. The goal is to prepare students to function in the technical and management positions of the future.

The basic concepts and techniques of this field are taught in a broad variety of courses in universities, colleges and business schools. The two basic approaches are those of operations research (OR) and of artificial intelligence (AI). However, the presentation of linear and integer programming in the OR courses has not significantly changed in style or content since Dantzig's 1963 textbook. Currently, AI techniques are treated separately and the software tools used, namely LISP and Prolog, make it difficult to integrate logical methods with quantitative techniques in the problem solving process.To bridge this gap, this course presents these topics in an integrated fashion; this is accomplished by pursuing unifying concepts that go back to the work of Fourier and Boole and by incorporating computational logic software based on object-orientation and constraint logic programming.

The courseware we have developed supports the continuous variable of linear programming as an Abstract Data Type (in the manner of C++) and the logical constraints are supported by a constraint logic programming control. The courseware has been named 2LP, which stands for "Linear Programming and Logic Programming." This courseware will allow the students to express logical and integer programming problems in a very succinct way as well as facilitate trying to solve them by many different techniques and strategies The interplay between the applications, the concepts, and the 2LP software makes this whole decision making process concrete.