Book Reviews 431

buyers with respect to the contract, aspects of nego- tiation, and supplementary agreements. The selection process is concluded by a report on the evaluation process and the results of evaluation, as well as recom- mendations concerning the authority of decision. In two chapters which are added at the end, the author briefly treats special problems of evaluation: the use of micros, minis and mainframes, as well as the prob- lem of distributed versus centralised processing.

The appendices are more extensive and informa- tive than the chapters of the book. They contain a computer centre re.equipment study (the case under- lying the book), descriptions of important phases of evaluation and, in particular, a representation of the form of evaluation. A special feature which consti- tutes the very core of the evaluation approach, is the pre-setting of sample responses for the individual evaluation criteria.

Considering the book as a whole, the imbalanced representation of the contents may be criticized. Some chapters are largely confined to general remarks, whereas others are specified by extensive appendices. This heterogeneity and the small size of type make the reading somewhat difficult. The author succeeds, how- ever, in showing clearly the complexity of practical selection processes and in bringing out the basic prin- ciples of the approach used. Furthermore, the fre- quently inserted practical hints are useful.

Since the book is practice-oriented it may be recommended to those persons who are potential pur- chasers of computers. For operational research work- ers, planners, managers who work with a given com- puter configuration the book is not so interesting. In view of its rather simple format the price seems to be somewhat high.

Hermann GEHRING Fernuniversit~t-Gesamthochschule D-58 Hagen, Fed. Rep. Germany

K. LOMMATZSCH (Ed.) Anwendungen der Linearen Parametrischen Optimierung Birkhauser Verlag, Basel, 1979

The title of the book is quite misleading. According to this title one would expect to find applications of known and/or new methods of parametric program- ruing on real.world problems; however, the book con- sists of single, highly theoretical contributions of a group of researchers from the Humboldt University,

Berlin. As the authors themselves say in the Introduc- tion (p. 2)i "The applications mentioned in the title are rather of the nature of mathematical appliea. tions ..."

In Chapter 1 the needed notation and notion are introduced. Chapter 2 describes known results of linear parametric programming, Chapter 3 deals with the known connections between parametric program- ruing and linear vector optimization. Chapters 4 and 5 is an interesting description of connections between linear parametric programming and stochastic pro- gramming and control problems respectively. A con- nection between Bender's decomposition approach and linear parametric programming is described in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 deals with quadratic program- ruing problems generated by a specially structured parametric problem. In Chapter 8 some properties of matrix games in connection with parametric prob- lems are investigated. Chapter 9 describes a solution method for the Steiner-Weber-problem 0ocation- allocation-problems) via a parametric model. The last Chapter 10 describes on a high theoretical level an application of parametric programming on a partially mechanized vegetable harvest. This 'application' is illustrated by two examples, with n = 2 and n = 3.

The way of choosing literature for the reference in the book is quite strange. For instance, the fundamen- tal works on methods for multiparametrie linear pro- gramming by T. Gal (published since 1965 in various languages and summarized in a German and an English book version), furthermore the generalized works by Finkelstejn on allround parametrisation of a linear program, the pioneering works by Bereanu, Moeseke and Tintner (1964!) on stochastic and parametric pro- gramming and many other works are simply ignored.

The book will be certainly interesting for mathe- maticians and for OR-specialists dealing rather with theoretical questions.

B. VOGELER Femuniversit~tr Hagen, Fed. Rep. Germany

M. BECKMANN and H~P. KONZI (Eds.) Lecture Notes in Economies and Mathematical Systems 1-170: An Index and Other Useful Infer- nation Springer, Berlin, 1979, 40 pages. Free publication

In less than 12 years, Springer has published 170 volumes in its series "Lecture notes in economics and

432 Book Reviews

Table 1 The 170 volumes by year of publication

Table 3 Differences between first 50 and last 50 volumes

Year of publication Number of volumes Vols. 1-50 Vols. 121-170

1968 5 1969 11 1970 23 1971 20 1972 16 1973 15 1974 16 1975 7 1976 25 1977 13 1978 I1 1979 8

ma~.hematical systems." Many volumes are reviewed in this Journal; some characteristics of the series as a whole are discussed here. The Index contains titles of volumes and of contributed artic.~es in chronological order, a list of authors, and guidelines for authors of monographs and editors of proceedings. A free copy of the Index may be obtained by writing to Springer- Verlag Berlin, Heidelberger Platz 3, D-1000 Berlin 33, Germany.

The series contains monographs and proceedings in the ~reas of mathematical economics, economic the- ory, operations re.~eareh~ econometrics, and mathemat- ical systems. Its aim is to report on new developments

Table 2 Number of volumes quoted at various prices and their average number of pages

Price Number of Average number (in DM) volumes of pages

18 64 115 21.50 38 172 25 14 218 28.50 11 272 32 10 329 35.50 7 379 39 7 426 42.50 4 473 46 2 520 47 i 575 48 3 571 56 1 723 64 1 755

Average number of pages 175 243 Number of English titles 18 41 Number of edited volumes 10 23

(typically proceedings)

in these areas quickly, informally, at a high level, and at a reasonable price. The rate of publication is fluctu- ating without evident growth, cf. Table 1. The printing, the paper, and the well-known gray soft covers look cheap - and are cheap, so that prices should be no ob- stacle even for private people, cf. Table 2. Plotting the average number of pages you obtain for the quoted prices indeed shows Springer's linear pricing policy for this series:

Price in DM = 10 + ~ (number of pages).

The series of 170 volumes consists of: 106 English titles,

60 German titles, 3 French titles.

Another partition is: 11 7 are authored (typically monographs),

53 are edited (typically proceedings). Over the years, there have been shifts in editorial policy, cf. Table 3. Volumes have become thicker, there has been a shift towards English titles (80% of the last fifty volumes), and towards edited volumes like proceedings etc. (nearly 50% of tile last fifty volumes).

A quick, informal, cheap means of publication has advan'~ages both for authors and readers. A disadvan- tage is the quality of the printing, which is typewritten, camera-ready material, reduced to 75%. This makes for less pleasant reading than typeset material. I hope one day the techniques of typewriting and typesetting will converge, when authors will have at their disposal word-processors that can give each letter the width it needs (narrow i, wide m), print various letter types (italic, bold) and right-adjust lines. Needless to say, authors will have to be professional printers by that time!

C.B. TILANUS University of Technology Eindhoven, Netherlands