Stanford University: Keith Schwarz's "IR Optimization"

Read pages 1 through 10 of the handout, and the associated lecture notes, which are an excellent unified formal treatment of the topic.

Click http://web.archive.org/web/20160310175656/http://www.keithschwarz.com/cs143/WWW/sum2011/handouts/260_Code_Optimization.pdf link to open resource.