Convexity is a simple idea that manifests itself in a surprising variety of places. This fertile field has an immensely rich structure and numerous applications. Barvinok demonstrates that simplicity, intuitive appeal, and the universality of applications make teaching (and learning) convexity a gratifying experience. The book will benefit both teacher and student: It is easy to understand, entertaining to the reader, and includes many exercises that vary in degree of difficulty. Overall, the author demonstrates the power of a few simple unifying principles in a variety of pure and applied problems. The prerequisites are minimal amounts of linear algebra, analysis, and elementary topology, plus basic computational skills. Portions of the book could be used by advanced undergraduates. As a whole, it is designed for graduate students interested in mathematical methods, computer science, electrical engineering, and operations research. The book will also be of interest to research mathematicians, who will find some results that are recent, some that are new, and many known results that are discussed from a new perspective.

Table of Contents

Chapter I. Convex Sets at Large

Chapter II. Faces and Extreme Points

Chapter III. Convex Sets in Topological Vector Spaces

Chapter IV. Polarity, Duality and Linear Programming

Chapter V. Convex Bodies and Ellipsoids

Chapter VI. Faces of Polytopes

Chapter VII. Lattices and Convex Bodies

Chapter VIII. Lattice Points and Polyhedra

About the Author

Alexander Barvinok is a professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, interested in computational complexity and algorithms in algebra, geometry and combinatorics. The reader might be familiar with his books “A Course in Convexity” (AMS, 2002) and “Integer Points in Polyhedra” (EMS, 2008)