ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a general description of the recursive technique and discusses some fundamental techniques in optimization. It describes the Netravali and Robbins algorithm and introduces several other typical pel-recursive algorithms. The progress and success of the Netravali and Robbins algorithm stimulated great research interest in pel-recursive techniques. A comprehensive survey of various algorithms using the pel-recursive technique can be found in a paper by H. G. Musmann et al. Speed of convergence is an important issue in discussing the descent method. It is utilized to evaluate the performance of different algorithms. The steepest descent method is the oldest and simplest one among various techniques in the descent method. The Newton-Raphson method is the next most popular method among various descent methods. The performance of the Netravali and Robbins algorithm has been evaluated using computer simulation. The performance of the Newton-Raphson method improves when it works in the area close to the minimum.
