A lower bound on the iterative complexity of the Harker and Pang globalization technique of the Newton-min algorithm for solving the linear complementarity problem

The plain Newton-min algorithm for solving the linear complementarity problem (LCP) 0 ≤ x ⊥ (Mx+q) ≥ 0 can be viewed as an instance of the plain semismooth Newton method on the equational version min(x,Mx+q) = 0 of the problem. This algorithm converges for any q when M is an M-matrix, but not when it … Read more

The Proximal Alternating Minimization Algorithm for two-block separable convex optimization problems with linear constraints

The Alternating Minimization Algorithm (AMA) has been proposed by Tseng to solve convex programming problems with two-block separable linear constraints and objectives, whereby (at least) one of the components of the latter is assumed to be strongly convex. The fact that one of the subproblems to be solved within the iteration process of AMA does … Read more

An ADMM-Based Interior-Point Method for Large-Scale Linear Programming

In this paper, we propose a new framework to implement interior point method (IPM) in order to solve some very large scale linear programs (LP). Traditional IPMs typically use Newton’s method to approximately solve a subproblem that aims to minimize a log-barrier penalty function at each iteration. Due its connection to Newton’s method, IPM is … Read more

A proximal minimization algorithm for structured nonconvex and nonsmooth problems

We propose a proximal algorithm for minimizing objective functions consisting of three summands: the composition of a nonsmooth function with a linear operator, another nonsmooth function, each of the nonsmooth summands depending on an independent block variable, and a smooth function which couples the two block variables. The algorithm is a full splitting method, which … Read more

Stochastic subgradient method converges on tame functions

This work considers the question: what convergence guarantees does the stochastic subgradient method have in the absence of smoothness and convexity? We prove that the stochastic subgradient method, on any semialgebraic locally Lipschitz function, produces limit points that are all first-order stationary. More generally, our result applies to any function with a Whitney stratifiable graph. … Read more

A data-independent distance to infeasibility for linear conic systems

We offer a unified treatment of distinct measures of well-posedness for homogeneous conic systems. To that end, we introduce a distance to infeasibility based entirely on geometric considerations of the elements defining the conic system. Our approach sheds new light into and connects several well-known condition measures for conic systems, including {\em Renegar’s} distance to … Read more

Distributionally Robust Inverse Covariance Estimation: The Wasserstein Shrinkage Estimator

We introduce a distributionally robust maximum likelihood estimation model with a Wasserstein ambiguity set to infer the inverse covariance matrix of a p-dimensional Gaussian random vector from n independent samples. The proposed model minimizes the worst case (maximum) of Stein’s loss across all normal reference distributions within a prescribed Wasserstein distance from the normal distribution … Read more

A family of spectral gradient methods for optimization

We propose a family of spectral gradient methods, whose stepsize is determined by a convex combination of the short Barzilai-Borwein (BB) stepsize and the long BB stepsize. It is shown that each member of the family shares certain quasi-Newton property in the sense of least squares. The family also includes some other gradient methods as … Read more

Parallel and Distributed Successive Convex Approximation Methods for Big-Data Optimization

Recent years have witnessed a surge of interest in parallel and distributed optimization methods for large-scale systems. In particular, nonconvex large-scale optimization problems have found a wide range of applications in several engineering fields. The design and the analysis of such complex, large-scale, systems pose several challenges and call for the development of new optimization … Read more

Robust-to-Dynamics Optimization

A robust-to-dynamics optimization (RDO) problem} is an optimization problem specified by two pieces of input: (i) a mathematical program (an objective function $f:\mathbb{R}^n\rightarrow\mathbb{R}$ and a feasible set $\Omega\subseteq\mathbb{R}^n$), and (ii) a dynamical system (a map $g:\mathbb{R}^n\rightarrow\mathbb{R}^n$). Its goal is to minimize $f$ over the set $\mathcal{S}\subseteq\Omega$ of initial conditions that forever remain in $\Omega$ under … Read more