Properties of the block BFGS update and its application to the limited-memory block BNS method for unconstrained minimization.

A block version of the BFGS variable metric update formula and its modifications are investigated. In spite of the fact that this formula satisfies the quasi-Newton conditions with all used difference vectors and that the improvement of convergence is the best one in some sense for quadratic objective functions, for general functions it does not … Read more

New algorithms for discrete vector optimization based on the Graef-Younes method and cone-monotone sorting functions

The well-known Jahn-Graef-Younes algorithm, proposed by Jahn in 2006, generates all minimal elements of a finite set with respect to an ordering cone. It consists of two Graef-Younes procedures, namely the forward iteration, which eliminates a part of the non-minimal elements, followed by the backward iteration, which is applied to the reduced set generated by … Read more

A Line-Search Algorithm Inspired by the Adaptive Cubic Regularization Framework and Complexity Analysis

Adaptive regularized framework using cubics has emerged as an alternative to line-search and trust-region algorithms for smooth nonconvex optimization, with an optimal complexity amongst second-order methods. In this paper, we propose and analyze the use of an iteration dependent scaled norm in the adaptive regularized framework using cubics. Within such scaled norm, the obtained method … Read more

A Levenberg-Marquardt method for large nonlinear least-squares problems with dynamic accuracy in functions and gradients

In this paper we consider large scale nonlinear least-squares problems for which function and gradient are evaluated with dynamic accuracy and propose a Levenberg-Marquardt method for solving such problems. More precisely, we consider the case in which the exact function to optimize is not available or its evaluation is computationally demanding, but ap- proximations of … Read more

Incorporating Black-Litterman Views in Portfolio Construction when Stock Returns are a Mixture of Normals

In this paper, we consider the basic problem of portfolio construction in financial engineering, and analyze how market-based and analytical approaches can be combined to obtain efficient portfolios. As a first step in our analysis, we model the asset returns as a random variable distributed according to a mixture of normal random variables. We then … Read more

Complexity analysis of second-order line-search algorithms for smooth nonconvex optimization

There has been much recent interest in finding unconstrained local minima of smooth functions, due in part of the prevalence of such problems in machine learning and robust statistics. A particular focus is algorithms with good complexity guarantees. Second-order Newton-type methods that make use of regularization and trust regions have been analyzed from such a … 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

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

Optimality conditions for minimizers at infinity in polynomial programming

In this paper we study necessary optimality conditions for the optimization problem $$\textrm{infimum}f_0(x) \quad \textrm{ subject to } \quad x \in S,$$ where $f_0 \colon \mathbb{R}^n \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ is a polynomial function and $S \subset \mathbb{R}^n$ is a set defined by polynomial inequalities. Assume that the problem is bounded below and has the Mangasarian–Fromovitz property … Read more

Analyzing Random Permutations for Cyclic Coordinate Descent

We consider coordinate descent methods on convex quadratic problems, in which exact line searches are performed at each iteration. (This algorithm is identical to Gauss-Seidel on the equivalent symmetric positive definite linear system.) We describe a class of convex quadratic problems for which the random-permutations version of cyclic coordinate descent (RPCD) outperforms the standard cyclic … Read more