A modified DIRECT algorithm for a problem in astrophysics

We present a modification of the DIRECT algorithm, called DIRECT-G, to solve a box-constrained global optimization problem arising in the detection of gravitational waves emitted by coalescing binary systems of compact objects. This is a hard problem since the objective function is highly nonlinear and expensive to evaluate, has a huge number of local extrema … Read more

Fairer Benchmarking of Optimization Algorithms via Derivative Free Optimization

Research in optimization algorithm design is often accompanied by benchmarking a new al- gorithm. Some benchmarking is done as a proof-of-concept, by demonstrating the new algorithm works on a small number of dicult test problems. Alternately, some benchmarking is done in order to demonstrate that the new algorithm in someway out-performs previous methods. In this … Read more

Calibrating Artificial Neural Networks by Global Optimization

An artificial neural network (ANN) is a computational model – implemented as a computer program – that is aimed at emulating the key features and operations of biological neural networks. ANNs are extensively used to model unknown or unspecified functional relationships between the input and output of a “black box” system. In order to apply … Read more

Development and Calibration of Currency Market Strategies by Global Optimization

We have developed a new financial indicator – called the Interest Rate Differential Adjusted for Volatility (IRDAV) measure – to assist investors in currency markets. On a monthly basis, we rank currency pairs according to this measure and generate a basket of pairs with the highest IRDAV values. Under positive market conditions, an IRDAV based … Read more

Euclidean Distance Matrix Completion Problems

A Euclidean distance matrix is one in which the $(i,j)$ entry specifies the squared distance between particle $i$ and particle $j$. Given a partially-specified symmetric matrix $A$ with zero diagonal, the Euclidean distance matrix completion problem (EDMCP) is to determine the unspecified entries to make $A$ a Euclidean distance matrix. We survey three different approaches … Read more

Locating a competitive facility in the plane with a robustness criterion

A new continuous location model is presented and embedded in the literature on robustness in facility location. The multimodality of the model is investigated, and a branch and bound method based on dc optimization is described. Numerical experience is reported, showing that the developed method allows one to solve in a few seconds problems with … Read more

Semidefinite Programming Approaches to Distance Geometry Problems

Given a subset of all the pair-wise distances between a set of points in a fixed dimension, and possibly the positions of few of the points (called anchors), can we estimate the (relative) positions of all the unknown points (in the given dimension) accurately? This problem is known as the Euclidean Distance Geometry or Graph … Read more

Sensitivity analysis of the optimal solutions to Huff-type competitive location and design problems

A chain wants to set up a single new facility in a planar market where similar facilities of competitors, and possibly of its own chain, are already present. Fixed demand points split their demand probabilistically over all facilities in the market proportionally with their attraction to each facility, determined by the different perceived qualities of … Read more

A genetic algorithm for a global optimization problem arising in the detection of gravitational waves

The detection of gravitational waves is a long-awaited event in modern physics and, to achieve this challenging goal, detectors with high sensitivity are being used or are under development. In order to extract gravitational signals, emitted by coalescing binary systems of compact objects (neutron stars and/or black holes), from noisy data obtained by interferometric detectors, … Read more

A Framework for Optimization under Ambiguity

In this paper, single stage stochastic programs with ambiguous distributions for the involved random variables are considered. Though the true distribution is unknown, existence of a reference measure P enables the construction of non-parametric ambiguity sets as Kantorovich balls around P. The resulting robustified problems are infinite optimization problems and can therefore not be solved … Read more