5. Key features of the simplex method

5.1 Variables

There are two main aspects to the nature and number of variables:

• as we have seen, variables can be continuous or discontinuous, but must be able to take several values. This excludes any binary variable, i.e. those with only two states, or any variable that can only take on a limited number of levels;

• the range of variable variation is, a priori, unlimited, but may be subject to constraints that depend on the phenomenon under study.

Increasing the number of variables only leads to a linear increase in the...