What is maths programming?

Mathematical programming, or computational programming, is the process of translating mathematically representable problems into computer languages then harnessing the power of computers to solve them. Along with the Internet, and task facilitation, mathematical programming is probably the most important contribution from the modern computer to human evolution. There are many kinds of mathematical programming techniques. Among these are: linear and non-linear programming, integer programming, mixed complementary problems, networks, goal programming, multiple objective optimization, queuing theory, regression analysis, and many more.

How do you determine which kind of method should be applied?

That is exactly the challenge with mathematical programming. Problems need to be formulated into maths before they can be solved. Once the problems are formulated, different characteristics become apparent. For example, decision variables and constraints can be isolated; the problem can be clearly over or under identified; solutions might be bounded or unbounded; or the domain can be confirmed as increasing in x.

Can the problem be represented by a set of nodes and arcs?

By summarizing the mathematical content the problem can be matched to solution techniques and solved computationally.