The aim of this course is to introduce the concept of analytical modeling, optimization problems and the fundamental properties of an optimization problem. Students will learn basics of transforming problems into analytical/quantitative/mathematical models, and how to formulate and solve simple mathematical models that represent optimization problems. Both exact algorithms and approximate algorithms, particularly heuristic techniques will be covered in order to form an understanding of algorithms and algorithm design to solve optimization problems. Throughout the course linear, nonlinear and integer optimization problems, network flow and network design problems will be the main focus with examples from the data science and data analytics domain.