Weak convergence of an extended splitting method for monotone inclusions

In this article, we consider the problem of finding zeros of two-operator monotone inclusions in real Hilbert spaces, and the second operator has been linearly composed. We suggest an extended splitting method: At each iteration, it mainly solves one resolvent for each operator, respectively. For these two resolvents, the involved two scaling factors can be … Read more

Partial smoothness of the numerical radius at matrices whose fields of values are disks

Solutions to optimization problems involving the numerical radius often belong to a special class: the set of matrices having field of values a disk centered at the origin. After illustrating this phenomenon with some examples, we illuminate it by studying matrices around which this set of “disk matrices” is a manifold with respect to which … Read more

A Comparison of Nonsmooth, Nonconvex, Constrained Optimization Solvers for the Design of Time-Delay Compensators

We present a detailed set of performance comparisons of two state-of-the-art solvers for the application of designing time-delay compensators, an important problem in the field of robust control. Formulating such robust control mechanics as constrained optimization problems often involves objective and constraint functions that are both nonconvex and nonsmooth, both of which present significant challenges … Read more

Basis Pursuit Denoise with Nonsmooth Constraints

Level-set optimization formulations with data-driven constraints minimize a regularization functional subject to matching observations to a given error level. These formulations are widely used, particularly for matrix completion and sparsity promotion in data interpolation and denoising. The misfit level is typically measured in the l2 norm, or other smooth metrics. In this paper, we present … Read more

Parallelizing Subgradient Methods for the Lagrangian Dual in Stochastic Mixed-Integer Programming

The dual decomposition of stochastic mixed-integer programs can be solved by the projected subgradient algorithm. We show how to make this algorithm more amenable to parallelization in a master-worker model by describing two approaches, which can be combined in a natural way. The first approach partitions the scenarios into batches, and makes separate use of … Read more

Acceleration of Primal-Dual Methods by Preconditioning and Simple Subproblem Procedures

Primal-Dual Hybrid Gradient (PDHG) and Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) are two widely-used first-order optimization methods. They reduce a difficult problem to simple subproblems, so they are easy to implement and have many applications. As first-order methods, however, they are sensitive to problem conditions and can struggle to reach the desired accuracy. To improve … Read more

A New Sequential Optimality Condition for Constrained Nonsmooth Optimization

We introduce a sequential optimality condition for locally Lipschitz constrained nonsmooth optimization, verifiable just using derivative information, and which holds even in the absence of any constraint qualification. The proposed sequential optimality condition is not only novel for nonsmooth problems, but brings new insights for the smooth case as well. We present a practical algorithm … Read more

A Unified Framework for Sparse Relaxed Regularized Regression: SR3

Regularized regression problems are ubiquitous in statistical modeling, signal processing, and machine learning. Sparse regression in particular has been instrumental in scientific model discovery, including compressed sensing applications, vari- able selection, and high-dimensional analysis. We propose a broad framework for sparse relaxed regularized regression, called SR3. The key idea is to solve a relaxation of … Read more

Inexact alternating projections on nonconvex sets

Given two arbitrary closed sets in Euclidean space, a simple transversality condition guarantees that the method of alternating projections converges locally, at linear rate, to a point in the intersection. Exact projection onto nonconvex sets is typically intractable, but we show that computationally-cheap inexact projections may suffice instead. In particular, if one set is defined … Read more