A GENTLE INTRODUCTION TO NUMERICA

NUMERICA is a modeling language for stating and solving global optimiz ation problems. It makes it possible to express these problems in a no tation close to the way these problems are stated in textbooks or scie ntific papers. In addition, the constraint-solving algorithm of NUMERI CA, which combines techniques from numerical analysis and artificial i ntelligence, provides many guarantees about correctness, convergence, and completeness. This paper is a gentle introduction to NUMERICA. It highlights some of the main difficulties of global optimization and il lustrates the functionality of NUMERICA by contrasting it to tradition al methods. It also presents the essence of the constraint-solving alg orithm of NUMERICA in a novel, high-level, way. (C) 1998 Elsevier Scie nce B.V. All rights reserved.