The use of grossone in Mathematical Programming and Operations Research

The concepts of infinity and infinitesimal in mathematics date back to ancients Greek and have always attracted great attention. Very recently, a new methodology has been proposed by Sergeyev [10] for performing calculations with infinite and infinitesimal quantities, by introducing an infinite unit of measure expressed by the numeral (1) (grossone). An important characteristic of this novel approach is its attention to numerical aspects. In this paper we will present some possible applications and use of (1) in Operations Research and Mathematical Programming. In particular, we will show how the use of (1) can be beneficial in anti-cycling procedure for the well-known Simplex Method for solving Linear Programming problems and in defining exact differentiable penalty functions in Nonlinear Programming. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.