This paper studies a general form problem in which a lower bounded continuously differentiable function is minimized over a block separable set incorporating a group sparsity expression as a constraint or a penalty (or both) in the group sparsity setting. This class of problems is generally hard to solve, yet highly applicable in numerous practical … Read more
In this paper, we study augmented Lagrangian functions for nonlinear semidefinite programming (NSDP) problems with exactness properties. The term exact is used in the sense that the penalty parameter can be taken appropriately, so a single minimization of the augmented Lagrangian recovers a solution of the original problem. This leads to reformulations of NSDP problems … Read more
Sketching, a dimensionality reduction technique, has received much attention in the statistics community. In this paper, we study sketching in the context of Newton’s method for solving finite-sum optimization problems in which the number of variables and data points are both large. We study two forms of sketching that perform dimensionality reduction in data space: … Read more
In this paper, we study polynomial norms, i.e. norms that are the dth root of a degree-d homogeneous polynomial f. We first show that a necessary and sufficient condition for f^(1/d) to be a norm is for f to be strictly convex, or equivalently, convex and positive definite. Though not all norms come from dth … Read more
The Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm is one of the most popular algorithms for finding the solution of nonlinear least squares problems. Across different modified variations of the basic procedure, the algorithm enjoys global convergence, a competitive worst case iteration complexity rate, and a guaranteed rate of local convergence for both zero and nonzero small residual problems, under … Read more
Interior-point methods have been shown to be very efficient for large-scale nonlinear programming. The combination with penalty methods increases their robustness due to the regularization of the constraints caused by the penalty term. In this paper a primal-dual penalty-interior-point algorithm is proposed, that is based on an augmented Lagrangian approach with an l2-exact penalty function. … Read more
We consider primal-dual IP methods where the linear system arising at each iteration is formulated in the reduced (augmented) form and solved approximately. Focusing on the iterates close to a solution, we analyze the accuracy of the so-called inexact step, i.e., the step that solves the unreduced system, when combining the effects of both different … Read more
This paper introduces a derivative-free and ready-to-use solver for nonlinear programs with nonlinear equality and inequality constraints (NLPs). Using finite differences and a sequential quadratic programming (SQP) approach, the algorithm aims at finding a local minimizer and no extra attempt is made to generate a globally optimal solution. Due to the use of finite differences, … Read more
We propose a gradient-based method for quadratic programming problems with a single linear constraint and bounds on the variables. Inspired by the GPCG algorithm for bound-constrained convex quadratic programming [J.J. More’ and G. Toraldo, SIAM J. Optim. 1, 1991], our approach alternates between two phases until convergence: an identification phase, which performs gradient projection iterations … Read more
Cutting planes are derived from specific problem structures, such as a single linear constraint from an integer program. This paper introduces cuts that involve minimal structural assumptions, enabling the generation of strong polyhedral relaxations for a broad class of problems. We consider valid inequalities for the set $S\cap P$, where $S$ is a closed set, … Read more