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Linear Programming Lecture Notes - Penn State Personal Web Server

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CHAPTER 9<br />

Duality<br />

In the last chapter, we explored the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions and identified<br />

constraints called the dual feasibility constraints. In this section, we show that to each<br />

linear programming problem (the primal problem) we may associate another linear programming<br />

problem (the dual linear programming problem). These two problems are closely<br />

related to each other and an analysis of the dual problem can provide deep insight into the<br />

primal problem.<br />

1. The Dual Problem<br />

Consider the linear programming problem<br />

⎧<br />

⎪⎨ max c<br />

(9.1) P<br />

⎪⎩<br />

T x<br />

s.t. Ax ≤ b<br />

x ≥ 0<br />

Then the dual problem for Problem P is:<br />

⎧<br />

⎪⎨<br />

min wb<br />

(9.2) D s.t. wA ≥ c<br />

⎪⎩<br />

w ≥ 0<br />

Remark 9.1. Let v be a vector of surplus variables. Then we can transform Problem<br />

D into standard form as:<br />

⎧<br />

min wb<br />

⎪⎨ s.t. wA − v = c<br />

(9.3) DS<br />

w ≥ 0<br />

⎪⎩<br />

v ≥ 0<br />

Thus we already see an intimate relationship between duality and the KKT conditions. The<br />

feasible region of the dual problem (in standard form) is precisely the the dual feasibility<br />

constraints of the KKT conditions for the primal problem.<br />

In this formulation, we see that we have assigned a dual variable wi (i = 1, . . . , m) to<br />

each constraint in the system of equations Ax ≤ b of the primal problem. Likewise dual<br />

variables v can be thought of as corresponding to the constraints in x ≥ 0.<br />

Lemma 9.2. The dual of the dual problem is the primal problem.<br />

137

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