Programmers: Where should I look for help with this????
 

Hey all...

I have some programming experience, and the project Im currently working on needs to optimize a sum.

Basically, Im looking at a large group of equations, and then want to maximize a sum over some (or all) of the variables.


For example, given:

a + b + c = 1
x + y + z = b
l + m = y

maximize the value of:

4a + b - 2c + x + y +5z - l + m



But, with many many more equations.


This seems like something that would be a fairly common problem in programming, and there should be some good sites/algorithms dedicated to this process.

But, I dont even know what this is called [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

Can anyone point me in a good direction here??



(FWIW, I have a decent understanding of basic linear algebra, since it seems like that might be useful here)