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The Excel Solver finds solutions for nonlinear programming
models, but the nature of the solution obtained usually requires
additional analysis. For some problems, the solution can be
identified as the global optimum solution, that is, the solution
that maximizes or minimizes the objective function over all
feasible solutions. For other problems, the solution can only
be identified as a local optimum, that is, a solution better
than all feasible points in the close neighborhood of the solution.
Because of numerical difficulties associated with the procedure,
it is even possible that the Solver may fail to find a local
optimum. We leave these questions to more advanced texts on
nonlinear programming. Here we describe the operation of the
add-in when the Nonlinear item on the OR_MM menu is selected.
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