Multilinear formulations for computing Nash equilibrium of multi-player matrix games

We present multilinear and mixed-integer multilinear programs to find a Nash equilibrium in multi-player strategic-form games. We compare the formulations to common algorithms in Gambit, and conclude that a multilinear feasibility program finds a Nash equilibrium faster than any of the methods we compare it to, including the quantal response equilibrium method, which is recommended … Read more

Revisiting local branching with a machine learning lens

Finding high-quality solutions to mixed-integer linear programming problems (MILPs) is of great importance for many practical applications. In this respect, the refinement heuristic local branching (LB) has been proposed to produce improving solutions and has been highly influential for the development of local search methods in MILP. The algorithm iteratively explores a sequence of solution … Read more

Relaxations and Cutting Planes for Linear Programs with Complementarity Constraints

We study relaxations for linear programs with complementarity constraints, especially instances whose complementary pairs of variables are not independent. Our formulation is based on identifying vertex covers of the conflict graph of the instance and generalizes the extended reformulation-linearization technique of Nguyen, Richard, and Tawarmalani to instances with general complementarity conditions between variables. We demonstrate … Read more

Cutting-plane algorithm for sparse estimation of the Cox proportional-hazards model

Survival analysis is a family of statistical methods for analyzing event occurrence times. In this paper, we address the mixed-integer optimization approach to sparse estimation of the Cox proportional-hazards model for survival analysis. Specifically, we propose a high-performance cutting-plane algorithm based on reformulation of bilevel optimization for sparse estimation. This algorithm solves the upper-level problem … Read more

Markov Chain-based Policies for Multi-stage Stochastic Integer Linear Programming with an Application to Disaster Relief Logistics

We introduce an aggregation framework to address multi-stage stochastic programs with mixed-integer state variables and continuous local variables (MSILPs). Our aggregation framework imposes additional structure to the integer state variables by leveraging the information of the underlying stochastic process, which is modeled as a Markov chain (MC). We demonstrate that the aggregated MSILP can be … Read more

V-polyhedral disjunctive cuts

We introduce V-polyhedral disjunctive cuts (VPCs) for generating valid inequalities from general disjunctions. Cuts are critical to integer programming solvers, but the benefit from many families is only realized when the cuts are applied recursively, causing numerical instability and “tailing off” of cut strength after several rounds. To mitigate these difficulties, the VPC framework offers … Read more

Recursive McCormick Linearization of Multilinear Programs

Linear programming (LP) relaxations are widely employed in exact solution methods for multilinear programs (MLP). One example is the family of Recursive McCormick Linearization (RML) strategies, where bilinear products are substituted for artificial variables, which deliver a relaxation of the original problem when introduced together with concave and convex envelopes. In this article, we introduce … Read more

Efficient composite heuristics for integer bound constrained noisy optimization

This paper discusses a composite algorithm for bound constrained noisy derivative-free optimization problems with integer variables. This algorithm is an integer variant of the matrix adaptation evolution strategy. An integer derivative-free line search strategy along affine scaling matrix directions is used to generate candidate points. Each affine scaling matrix direction is a product of the … Read more

Dendrograms, Minimum Spanning Trees and Feature Selection

Feature selection is a fundamental process to avoid overfitting and to reduce the size of databases without significant loss of information that applies to hierarchical clustering. Dendrograms are graphical representations of hierarchical clustering algorithms that for single linkage clustering can be interpreted as minimum spanning trees in the complete network defined by the database. In … Read more

Maximizing resilience in large-scale social networks

Motivated by the importance of social resilience as a crucial element in cascading leaving of users from a social network, we study identifying a largest relaxed variant of a degree-based cohesive subgraph: the maximum anchored k-core problem. Given graph G=(V,E) and integers k and b, the maximum anchored k-core problem seeks to find a largest … Read more