Hacker News Reader

Huh! what ?

I think you are thinking of linear programming, and OR is way more than that. OR is the first chapter of an OR book.

Too late to edit, meant LP is the first chapter in an OR book.

Yes, and there are several ways of linearizing models for OR

(however I think the MIP people waste too much time looking for the perfect linear model and the best solution instead of using things like simulated annealing which might give a very good solution in 10% of the time)

There are nonlinear solvers available but they are slower and not guaranteed to converge on a globally optimal solution.

Your statement is not universally true, it depends on the nonlinearity.

It's correct in the general case. A solver algorithm can find a globally optimum solution for some nonlinear functions, but it cannot be guaranteed to find a globally optimum solution for arbitrary nonlinear functions. That would be like solving P = NP or the Halting Problem.