First-order penalty methods for bilevel optimization

\(\) In this paper we study a class of unconstrained and constrained bilevel optimization problems in which the lower-level part is a convex optimization problem, while the upper-level part is possibly a nonconvex optimization problem. In particular, we propose penalty methods for solving them, whose subproblems turn out to be a structured minimax problem and … Read more

Superiorization: The asymmetric roles of feasibility-seeking and objective function reduction

The superiorization methodology can be thought of as lying conceptually between feasibility-seeking and constrained minimization. It is not trying to solve the full-fledged constrained minimization problem composed from the modeling constraints and the chosen objective function. Rather, the task is to find a feasible point which is “superior” (in a well-defined manner) with respect to … Read more

Computing the Completely Positive Factorization via Alternating Minimization

In this article, we propose a novel alternating minimization scheme for finding completely positive factorizations. In each iteration, our method splits the original factorization problem into two optimization subproblems, the first one being a orthogonal procrustes problem, which is taken over the orthogoal group, and the second one over the set of entrywise positive matrices. … Read more

Joint MSE Constrained Hybrid Beamforming and Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface

In this paper, the symbol detection mean squared error (MSE) constrained hybrid analog and digital beamforming is proposed in millimeter wave (mmWave) system, and the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is proposed to assist the mmWave system. The inner majorization-minimization (iMM) method is proposed to obtain analog transmitter, RIS and analog receivers, and the alternating direction … Read more

A Riemannian ADMM

We consider a class of Riemannian optimization problems where the objective is the sum of a smooth function and a nonsmooth function, considered in the ambient space. This class of problems finds important applications in machine learning and statistics such as the sparse principal component analysis, sparse spectral clustering, and orthogonal dictionary learning. We propose … Read more

Accelerated projected gradient algorithms for sparsity constrained optimization problems

\(\) We consider the projected gradient algorithm for the nonconvex best subset selection problem that minimizes a given empirical loss function under an \(\ell_0\)-norm constraint. Through decomposing the feasible set of the given sparsity constraint as a finite union of linear subspaces, we present two acceleration schemes with global convergence guarantees, one by same-space extrapolation … Read more

Continuous Equality Knapsack with Probit-Style Objectives

We study continuous, equality knapsack problems with uniform separable, non-convex objective functions that are continuous, strictly increasing, antisymmetric about a point, and have concave and convex regions. For example, this model captures a simple allocation problem with the goal of optimizing an expected value where the objective is a sum of cumulative distribution functions of … Read more

A Projected-Search Interior Method for Nonlinear Optimization

This paper concerns the formulation and analysis of a new interior method for general nonlinearly constrained optimization that combines a shifted primal-dual interior method with a projected-search method for bound-constrained optimization. The method involves the computation of an approximate Newton direction for a primal-dual penalty-barrier function that incorporates shifts on both the primal and dual … Read more

Inexact Penalty Decomposition Methods for Optimization Problems with Geometric Constraints

This paper provides a theoretical and numerical investigation of a penalty decomposition scheme for the solution of optimization problems with geometric constraints. In particular, we consider some  situations where parts of the constraints are nonconvex and complicated, like cardinality constraints, disjunctive programs, or matrix problems involving rank constraints. By a variable duplication and  decomposition strategy, … Read more

Using Taylor-Approximated Gradients to Improve the Frank-Wolfe Method for Empirical Risk Minimization

\(\) The Frank-Wolfe method has become increasingly useful in statistical and machine learning applications, due to the structure-inducing properties of the iterates, and especially in settings where linear minimization over the feasible set is more computationally efficient than projection. In the setting of Empirical Risk Minimization — one of the fundamental optimization problems in statistical … Read more