We investigate the behavior of the BFGS algorithm with an exact line search on nonsmooth functions. We show that it may fail on a simple polyhedral example, but that it apparently always succeeds on the Euclidean norm function, spiraling into the origin with a Q-linear rate of convergence; we prove this in the case of … Read more
We consider minimization of functions that are compositions of convex or prox-regular functions (possibly extended-valued) with smooth vector functions. A wide variety of important optimization problems fall into this framework. We describe an algorithmic framework based on a subproblem constructed from a linearized approximation to the objective and a regularization term. Properties of local solutions … Read more
We propose a randomized method for general convex optimization problems; namely, the minimization of a linear function over a convex body. The idea is to generate N random points inside the body, choose the best one and cut the part of the body defined by the linear constraint. We first analyze the convergence properties of … Read more
In this paper we develop a new approach to sparse principal component analysis (sparse PCA). We propose two single-unit and two block optimization formulations of the sparse PCA problem, aimed at extracting a single sparse dominant principal component of a data matrix, or more components at once, respectively. While the initial formulations involve nonconvex functions, … Read more
The linearly constrained matrix rank minimization problem is widely applicable in many fields such as control, signal processing and system identification. The linearly constrained nuclear norm minimization is a convex relaxation of this problem. Although it can be cast as a semidefinite programming problem, the nuclear norm minimization problem is expensive to solve when the … Read more
An important field of application of non-smooth optimization refers to decomposition of large-scale or complex problems by Lagrangian duality. In this setting, the dual problem consists in maximizing a concave non-smooth function that is defined as the sum of sub-functions. The evaluation of each sub-function requires solving a specific optimization sub-problem, with specific computational complexity. … Read more
Several highly effective algorithms that have been proposed recently for compressed sensing and image processing applications can be implemented efficiently on commodity graphical processing units (GPUs). The properties of algorithms and application that make for efficient GPU implementation are discussed, and computational results for several algorithms are presented that show large speedups over CPU implementations. … Read more
To minimize or upper-bound the value of a function “robustly”, we might instead minimize or upper-bound the “epsilon-robust regularization”, defined as the map from a point to the maximum value of the function within an epsilon-radius. This regularization may be easy to compute: convex quadratics lead to semidefinite-representable regularizations, for example, and the spectral radius … Read more
The scope of this dissertation addresses numerical and theoretical issues in the impulsive control of hybrid finite-dimensional Lagrangian systems. In order to treat these aspects, a modeling framework is presented based on the measure-differential inclusion representation of the Lagrangian dynamics. The main advantage of this representation is that it enables the incorporation of set-valued force … Read more
In this work, necessary conditions for the impulsive optimal control of multibody mechanical systems are stated. The conditions are obtained by the application subdifferential calculus techniques to extended-valued lower semi-continuous generalized Bolza functional that is evaluated on multiple intervals. Contrary to the approach in literature so far, the instant of possibly impulsive transition is considered … Read more