Adaptive Large Neighborhood Self-Regular Predictor-Corrector IPMs for LO

It is known that predictor-corrector methods in a large neighborhood of the central path are among the most efficient interior point methods (IPMs) for linear optimization (LO) problems. The best iteration bound based on the classical logarithmic barrier function is $O\left(n\log{\frac{n}{\epsilon}}\right)$. In this paper we propose a family of self-regular proximity based predictor-corrector (SR-PC) IPM … Read more

Symmetry Points of Convex Set: Basic Properties and Computational Complexity

Given a convex body S and a point x \in S, let sym(x,S) denote the symmetry value of x in S: sym(x,S):= max{t : x + t(x – y) \in S for every y \in S}, which essentially measures how symmetric S is about the point x, and define sym(S):=\max{sym(x,S) : x \in S }. … Read more

Recovering Risk-Neutral Probability Density Functions from Options Prices using Cubic Splines

We present a new approach to estimate the risk-neutral probability density function (pdf) of the future prices of an underlying asset from the prices of options written on the asset. The estimation is carried out in the space of cubic spline functions, yielding appropriate smoothness. The resulting optimization problem, used to invert the data and … Read more

On exploiting structure induced when modelling an intersection of cones in conic optimization

Conic optimization is the problem of optimizing a linear function over an intersection of an affine linear manifold with the Cartesian product of convex cones. However, many real world conic models involves an intersection rather than the product of two or more cones. It is easy to deal with an intersection of one or more … Read more

Computational Enhancements in Low-Rank Semidefinite Programming

We discuss computational enhancements for the low-rank semidefinite programming algorithm, including the extension to block semidefinite programs, an exact linesearch procedure, and a dynamic rank reduction scheme. A truncated Newton method is also introduced, and several preconditioning strategies are proposed. Numerical experiments illustrating these enhancements are provided. Citation Manuscript, Department of Mangagement Sciences, University of … Read more

A direct formulation for sparse PCA using semidefinite programming

We examine the problem of approximating, in the Frobenius-norm sense, a positive, semidefinite symmetric matrix by a rank-one matrix, with an upper bound on the cardinality of its eigenvector. The problem arises in the decomposition of a covariance matrix into sparse factors, and has wide applications ranging from biology to finance. We use a modification … Read more

Invariance and efficiency of convex representations

We consider two notions for the representations of convex cones: $G$-representation and lifted-$G$-representation. The former represents a convex cone as a slice of another; the latter allows in addition, the usage of auxiliary variables in the representation. We first study the basic properties of these representations. We show that some basic properties of convex cones … Read more

Solving Lift-and-Project Relaxations of Binary Integer Programs

We propose a method for optimizing the lift-and-project relaxations of binary integer programs introduced by Lov\’asz and Schrijver. In particular, we study both linear and semidefinite relaxations. The key idea is a restructuring of the relaxations, which isolates the complicating constraints and allows for a Lagrangian approach. We detail an enhanced subgradient method and discuss … Read more

Primal-Dual Interior-Point Algorithms for Semidefinite Optimization Based on a Simple Kernel Function

Interior-point methods (IPMs) for semidefinite optimization (SDO) have been studied intensively, due to their polynomial complexity and practical efficiency. Recently, J.Peng et al. introduced so-called self-regular kernel (and barrier) functions and designed primal-dual interior-point algorithms based on self-regular proximity for linear optimization (LO) problems. They have also extended the approach for LO to SDO. In … Read more

Universal Duality in Conic Convex Optimization

Given a primal-dual pair of linear programs, it is well known that if their optimal values are viewed as lying on the extended real line, then the duality gap is zero, unless both problems are infeasible, in which case the optimal values are +infinity and -infinity. In contrast, for optimization problems over nonpolyhedral convex cones, … Read more