On Khachiyan’s Algorithm for the Computation of Minimum Volume Enclosing Ellipsoids

Given $\cA := \{a^1,\ldots,a^m\} \subset \R^d$ whose affine hull is $\R^d$, we study the problems of computing an approximate rounding of the convex hull of $\cA$ and an approximation to the minimum volume enclosing ellipsoid of $\cA$. In the case of centrally symmetric sets, we first establish that Khachiyan’s barycentric coordinate descent (BCD) method is … Read more

Sparse Covariance Selection via Robust Maximum Likelihood Estimation

We address a problem of covariance selection, where we seek a trade-off between a high likelihood against the number of non-zero elements in the inverse covariance matrix. We solve a maximum likelihood problem with a penalty term given by the sum of absolute values of the elements of the inverse covariance matrix, and allow for … Read more

Analyticity of weighted central path and error bound for semidefinite programming

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, we show that every Cholesky-based weighted central path for semidefinite programming is analytic under strict complementarity. This result is applied to homogeneous cone programming to show that the central paths defined by the known class of optimal self-concordant barriers are analytic in the presence of strictly complementary … Read more

Constructing Generalized Mean Functions Using Convex Functions with Regularity Conditions

The generalized mean function has been widely used in convex analysis and mathematical programming. This paper studies a further generalization of such a function. A necessary and sufficient condition is obtained for the convexity of a generalized function. Additional sufficient conditions that can be easily checked are derived for the purpose of identifying some classes … Read more

An analytic center cutting plane approach for conic programming

We analyze the problem of finding a point strictly interior to a bounded, fully dimensional set from a finite dimensional Hilbert space. We generalize the results obtained for the LP, SDP and SOCP cases. The cuts added by our algorithm are central and conic. In our analysis, we find an upper bound for the number … Read more

Generalization of the primal and dual affine scaling algorithms

We obtain a class of primal ane scaling algorithms which generalize some known algorithms. This class, depending on a r-parameter, is constructed through a family of metrics generated by ��r power, r  1, of the diagonal iterate vector matrix. We prove the so-called weak convergence of the primal class for nondegenerate linearly constrained convex … Read more

Approximating K-means-type clustering via semidefinite programming

One of the fundamental clustering problems is to assign $n$ points into $k$ clusters based on the minimal sum-of-squares(MSSC), which is known to be NP-hard. In this paper, by using matrix arguments, we first model MSSC as a so-called 0-1 semidefinite programming (SDP). We show that our 0-1 SDP model provides an unified framework for … Read more

A Perturbed Gradient Algorithm in Hilbert Spaces

We propose a perturbed gradient algorithm with stochastic noises to solve a general class of optimization problems. We provide a convergence proof for this algorithm, under classical assumptions on the descent direction, and new assumptions on the stochastic noises. Instead of requiring the stochastic noises to correspond to martingale increments, we only require these noises … Read more

A Case Study of Joint Online Truck Scheduling and Inventory Management for Multiple Warehouses

For a real world problem — transporting pallets between warehouses in order to guarantee sufficient supply for known and additional stochastic demand — we propose a solution approach via convex relaxation of an integer programming formulation, suitable for online optimization. The essential new element linking routing and inventory management is a convex piecewise linear cost … Read more