A Benders squared (B2) framework for infinite-horizon stochastic linear programs

We propose a nested decomposition scheme for infinite-horizon stochastic linear programs. Our approach can be seen as a provably convergent extension of stochastic dual dynamic programming to the infinite-horizon setting: we explore a sequence of finite-horizon problems of increasing length until we can prove convergence with a given confidence level. The methodology alternates between a … Read more

Semidefinite Programming and Nash Equilibria in Bimatrix Games

We explore the power of semidefinite programming (SDP) for finding additive epsilon-approximate Nash equilibria in bimatrix games. We introduce an SDP relaxation for a quadratic programming formulation of the Nash equilibrium (NE) problem and provide a number of valid inequalities to improve the quality of the relaxation. If a rank-1 solution to this SDP is … Read more

SDP-based Branch-and-Bound for Non-convex Quadratic Integer Optimization

Semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations have been intensively used for solving discrete quadratic optimization problems, in particular in the binary case. For the general non-convex integer case with box constraints, the branch-and-bound algorithm Q-MIST has been proposed [11], which is based on an extension of the well-known SDP-relaxation for max-cut. For solving the resulting SDPs, Q-MIST … Read more

On the Linear Extension Complexity of Stable Set Polytopes for Perfect Graphs

We study the linear extension complexity of stable set polytopes of perfect graphs. We make use of known structural results permitting to decompose perfect graphs into basic perfect graphs by means of two graph operations: 2-join and skew partitions. Exploiting the link between extension complexity and the nonnegative rank of an associated slack matrix, we … Read more

Improved Conic Reformulations for K-means Clustering

In this paper, we show that the popular K-means clustering problem can equivalently be reformulated as a conic program of polynomial size. The arising convex optimization problem is NP-hard, but amenable to a tractable semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation that is tighter than the current SDP relaxation schemes in the literature. In contrast to the existing … Read more

Erratum to: On the DJL conjecture for order 6

In this note an erratum is provided to the article “On the DJL conjecture for order 6” by Naomi Shaked-Monderer, published in Operators and Matrices 11(1), 2017, 71–88. We will demonstrate and correct two errors in this article. The first error is in the statement of a proposition, which omits a certain category of extreme … Read more

DSOS and SDSOS Optimization: More Tractable Alternatives to Sum of Squares and Semidefinite Optimization

In recent years, optimization theory has been greatly impacted by the advent of sum of squares (SOS) optimization. The reliance of this technique on large-scale semidefinite programs however, has limited the scale of problems to which it can be applied. In this paper, we introduce DSOS and SDSOS optimization as linear programming and second-order cone … Read more

Random projections for trust region subproblems

The trust region method is an algorithm traditionally used in the field of derivative free optimization. The method works by iteratively constructing surrogate models (often linear or quadratic functions) to approximate the true objective function inside some neighborhood of a current iterate. The neighborhood is called “trust region” in the sense that the model is … Read more

Random projections for linear programming

Random projections are random linear maps, sampled from appropriate distributions, that approximately preserve certain geometrical invariants so that the approximation improves as the dimension of the space grows. The well-known Johnson-Lindenstrauss lemma states that there are \LL{random matrices with surprisingly few rows} that approximately preserve pairwise Euclidean distances among a set of points. This is … Read more

Robust Quadratic Programming with Mixed-Integer Uncertainty

We study robust convex quadratic programs where the uncertain problem parameters can contain both continuous and integer components. Under the natural boundedness assumption on the uncertainty set, we show that the generic problems are amenable to exact copositive programming reformulations of polynomial size. These convex optimization problems are NP-hard but admit a conservative semidefinite programming … Read more