/sci/ - Science & Math

i'm taking Operations Research during a semester abroad, and i think my professor might be fucking up when it comes to creating problems-

Problem 1. (20 marks) A salesperson wishes to pack a maximum value of items into two travel
suitcases. The weight of the items should not exceed 11 lb and 9 lb, respectively for the two
suitcases. The data for these items are in the following table.
Item No. Weight lb Value $
1 3 100
2 5 200
3 2 60
4 4 150
Formulate this problem as an LP model

he's looking for us to use a matrix where x1 represents the total number of items of type one in both suitcases, and so on for items 2 3 and 4, but this is retarded- the number of items in suitcase one will have no bearing on the items in suitcase two.

he's given us other problems of a similar nature, where you have manufacturing plants that have so much of a single resource available per minute, and each plant consumes so much of that resource to produce a number of items (the item-per-plant cost of production representing the elements of the matrix). i think the problem he's aiming for (which i've seen elsewhere online) is that each plant produces a single product and consumes so much of each resource (which is limited) to do so- in which case a matrix makes sense as the resource consumption of one plant does in fact impact how much resources are available for the rest of the plants

am i right, and if so, should i speak to him and risk making him "lose face" (i'm in asia) or should i just accept that he's a dumbass and go through the extra effort of translating his fucked up problems into real ones before coming up with solutions for them?

hey /sci/,

i'm taking a course in discrete probability and i've fallen a bit behind, and i don't want to buy the textbook. anyone know of any good websites with explanations and sample problems dealing with discrete probability?

inb4 "just buy the textbook"- i'm not buying the fucking thing because IMHO the textbook publishers are jew fucking niggers who price books at 100+ bucks because the universities (who also profit from this to a smaller degree) grant them the right to charge whatever they fuck they want to students. it's fucking bullshit and i'm not paying my hard earned tax-payer FAFSA handouts to help support this fucked up system