Linda Johansen, an incoming first-year MBA student, would like to determine her course schedule for her first two semesters of business school. Linda has created a list of twenty potential courses that most interest her, shown in Table 9.25. Linda has ranked her interest in each of these courses as a number between 3 and 5, as shown in the fifth column of Table 9.25.
Linda is allowed to take at most five courses in each semester. In determining her course schedule, Linda needs to consider the following:
Linda can only take a course if she has completed or is concurrently taking all courses that are prerequisites for the course. The prerequisites for all twenty courses are shown in the fifth column of Table 9.25.
In the Fall term, Linda must take at least three of the following five courses: Quantitative Methods (course 1), Microeconomics (course 2), Finance Theory (course 3), Accounting I (course 6), and Business Communications (course 20).
If Linda takes Financial Engineering (course 8), she will not be allowed to take Options and Futures (course 14), because these two courses cover fairly similar material.
Linda would like to take at least one course in Marketing (courses 12 and/or 13), and at least one course in Operations Management (courses 10 and/or 11).
Suppose that Linda's overall objective is to maximize her total interest level.
- Construct and solve a discrete optimization model that can be used to determine Linda's optimal course schedule. What is the optimal course schedule?
- Try to amend your model in order to generate a different solution with the same (optimal) objective value. What is the other optimal course schedule?
