WARREN B. POWELL, PhD, is Professor of Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Princeton University, where he is founder and Director of CASTLE Laboratory, a research unit that works with industrial partners to test new ideas found in operations research. The recipient of the 2004 INFORMS Fellow Award, Dr. Powell is the author of Approximate Dynamic Programming: Solving the Curses of Dimensionality, Second Edition (Wiley). ILYA O. RYZHOV, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Decision, Operations, and Information Technologies at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. He has made fundamental contributions to bridge the fields of ranking and selection with multiarmed bandits and optimal learning with mathematical programming.
He concludes, This book collects a number of interesting ideas in optimal learning, allows for connections to be made across disciplines, and is a welcome addition to my bookshelf. (Informs Journal on Computing, 1 October 2012)