PDFO: A Cross-Platform Package for Powell’s Derivative-Free Optimization Solvers

The late Professor M. J. D. Powell devised five trust-region derivative-free optimization methods, namely COBYLA, UOBYQA, NEWUOA, BOBYQA, and LINCOA. He also carefully implemented them into publicly available solvers, which are renowned for their robustness and efficiency. However, the solvers were implemented in Fortran 77 and hence may not be easily accessible to some users. … Read more

An Optimal Interpolation Set for Model-Based Derivative-Free Optimization Methods

This paper demonstrates the optimality of an interpolation set employed in derivative-free trust-region methods. This set is optimal in the sense that it minimizes the constant of well-poisedness in a ball centred at the starting point. It is chosen as the default initial interpolation set by many derivative-free trust-region methods based on underdetermined quadratic interpolation, … Read more

Sobolev Seminorm of Quadratic Functions with Applications to Derivative-Free Optimization

This paper studies the $H^1$ Sobolev seminorm of quadratic functions. The research is motivated by the least-norm interpolation that is widely used in derivative-free optimization. We express the $H^1$ seminorm of a quadratic function explicitly in terms of the Hessian and the gradient when the underlying domain is a ball. The seminorm gives new insights … Read more