In numerical optimization, line-search and trust-region methods are two important classes of descent schemes, with well-understood global convergence properties. Here we consider “accelerated” versions of these methods, where the conventional iterate is allowed to be replaced by any point that produces at least as much decrease in the cost function as a fixed fraction of … Read more
Given a non empty polyhedral set, we consider the problem of finding a vector belonging to it and having the minimum number of nonzero components, i.e., a feasible vector with minimum zero-norm. This nonsmooth combinatorial optimization problem is NP-Hard and arises in various fields such as machine learning, pattern recognition, signal processing. We propose two … Read more
We propose a solution method for a water-network optimization problem using a nonconvex continuous NLP (nonlinear programming) relaxation and a MINLP (mixed integer nonlinear programming) search. Our approach employs a relatively simple and accurate model that pays some attention to the requirements of the solvers that we employ. Our view is that in doing so, … Read more
This paper deals with numerical behaviour and convergence properties of a recently presented column generation approach for optimization of so called step-and-shoot radiotherapy treatment plans. The approach and variants of it have been reported to be efficient in practice, finding near-optimal solutions by generating only a low number of columns. The impact of different restrictions … Read more
Citation This paper is published in Annals of Operations Research, Springer
In many path planning situations we would like to find a path of constrained Euclidean length in 2D that minimises a line integral. We call this the Continuous Length-Constrained Minimum Cost Path Problem (C-LCMCPP). Generally, this will be a non-convex optimization problem, for which continuous approaches only ensure locally optimal solutions. However, network discretisations yield … Read more
We consider a regression problem where uncertainty affects to the dependent variable of the elements of the database. A model based on the standard epsilon-Support Vector Regression approach is given, where two hyperplanes need to be constructed to predict the interval-valued dependent variable. By using the Hausdorff distance to measure the error between predicted and … Read more
In this work, we consider a classification problem where the objects to be classified are bags of instances which are vectors measuring d different attributes. The classification rule is defined in terms of a ball, whose center and radius are the parameters to be computed. Given a bag, it is assigned to the positive class … Read more
This paper is concerned with the single-row facility layout problem (SRFLP). A globally optimal solution to the SRFLP is a linear placement of rectangular facilities with varying lengths that achieves the minimum total cost associated with the (known or projected) inter- actions between them. We demonstrate that the combination of a semidefinite programming relaxation with … Read more
The basis pursuit problem seeks a minimum one-norm solution of an underdetermined least-squares problem. Basis pursuit denoise (BPDN) fits the least-squares problem only approximately, and a single parameter determines a curve that traces the optimal trade-off between the least-squares fit and the one-norm of the solution. We prove that this curve is convex and continuously … Read more