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What is the difference between linear programming and mathematical programming?

GEORGE
Well, mathematical programming is more general. One of the people that was at the Pentagon in those days was a sharp economist, and eventually a well-known Harvard professor. That was Robert Dorfman. Bob Dorfman was after me to use the term mathematical programming, not linear programming. I felt that the whole way in which economists had set up their models was far, far more general than linear programming. Linear programming was a special case and that in order for the field to progress, we should stick to the simpler term linear programming. So he was after me right from the very beginning: why not generalize it? Why not use a more general term, mathematical programming? I felt greater progress would be made if we stuck to linear programming and later when the field matured generalize it to mathematical programming.

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