Production Theory for Constrained Linear Activity Models

The purpose of this paper is to generalize the framework of activity analysis discussed in Villar (2003) and obtain similar results concerning solvability. We generalize the model due to Villar (2003), without requiring any dimensional requirements on the activity matrices and by introducing a model of activity analysis in which each activity may (or may … Read more

A primal-dual majorization-minimization method for large-scale linear programs

We present a primal-dual majorization-minimization method for solving large-scale linear programs. A smooth barrier augmented Lagrangian (SBAL) function with strict convexity for the dual linear program is derived. The majorization-minimization approach is naturally introduced to develop the smoothness and convexity of the SBAL function. Our method only depends on a factorization of the constant matrix … Read more

A Sparse Interior Point Method for Linear Programs arising in Discrete Optimal Transport

Discrete Optimal Transport problems give rise to very large linear programs (LP) with a particular structure of the constraint matrix. In this paper we present an interior point method (IPM) specialized for the LP originating from the Kantorovich Optimal Transport problem. Knowing that optimal solutions of such problems display a high degree of sparsity, we … Read more

Lexicographic Branch-and-Bound Column Search

We present an exact generic method for solving the pricing problem in a column generation approach, which we call branch-and-bound column search. It searches the space of all feasible columns via a branch-and-bound tree search and returns all columns with a reduced-cost value below a certainthreshold. The approach is based on an idea from Krumke … Read more

A Reduced Jacobian Scheme with Full Convergence for Multicriteria Optimization

In this paper, we propose a variant of the reduced Jacobian method (RJM) introduced by El Maghri and Elboulqe in [JOTA, 179 (2018) 917–943] for multicriteria optimization under linear constraints. Motivation is that, contrarily to RJM which has only global convergence to Pareto KKT-stationary points in the classical sense of accumulation points, this new variant … Read more

Robust Actionable Prescriptive Analytics

We propose a new robust actionable prescriptive analytics framework that leverages past data and side information to minimize a risk-based objective function under distributional ambiguity. Our framework aims to find a policy that directly transforms the side information into implementable decisions. Specifically, we focus on developing actionable response policies that offer the benefits of interpretability … Read more

Efficient Use of Quantum Linear System Algorithms in Interior Point Methods for Linear Optimization

Quantum computing has attracted significant interest in the optimization community because it potentially can solve classes of optimization problems faster than conventional supercomputers. Several researchers proposed quantum computing methods, especially Quantum Interior Point Methods (QIPMs), to solve convex optimization problems, such as Linear Optimization, Semidefinite Optimization, and Second-order Cone Optimization problems. Most of them have … Read more

Tight Probability Bounds with Pairwise Independence

While useful probability bounds for \(n\) pairwise independent Bernoulli random variables adding up to at least an integer \(k\) have been proposed in the literature, none of these bounds are tight in general. In this paper, we provide several results in this direction. Firstly, when \(k = 1\), the tightest upper bound on the probability … Read more

On the Sparsity of Optimal Linear Decision Rules in Robust Optimization

We consider the widely-studied class of production-inventory problems with box uncertainty sets from the seminal work of Ben-Tal et al. (2004) on linear decision rules in robust optimization. We prove that there always exists an optimal linear decision rule for this class of problems in which the number of nonzero parameters in the linear decision … Read more

Revisiting Degeneracy, Strict Feasibility, Stability, in Linear Programming

Currently, the simplex method and the interior point method are indisputably the most popular algorithms for solving linear programs, LPs. Unlike general conic programs, LPs with a finite optimal value do not require strict feasibility in order to establish strong duality. Hence strict feasibility is seldom a concern, even though strict feasibility is equivalent to … Read more