Log-domain interior-point methods for convex quadratic programming

Applying an interior-point method to the central-path conditions is a widely used approach for solving quadratic programs. Reformulating these conditions in the log-domain is a natural variation on this approach that to our knowledge is previously unstudied. In this paper, we analyze log-domain interior-point methods and prove their polynomial-time convergence. We also prove that they … Read more

Adaptive Sampling Quasi-Newton Methods for Zeroth-Order Stochastic Optimization

We consider unconstrained stochastic optimization problems with no available gradient information. Such problems arise in settings from derivative-free simulation optimization to reinforcement learning. We propose an adaptive sampling quasi-Newton method where we estimate the gradients of a stochastic function using finite differences within a common random number framework. We develop modified versions of a norm … Read more

A Local MM Subspace Method for Solving Constrained Variational Problems in Image Recovery

This article introduces a new Penalized Majorization-Minimization Subspace algorithm (P-MMS) for solving smooth, constrained optimization problems. In short, our approach consists of embedding a subspace algorithm in an inexact exterior penalty procedure. The subspace strategy, combined with a Majoration-Minimization step-size search, takes great advantage of the smoothness of the penalized cost function, while the penalty … Read more

Scalable Parallel Nonlinear Optimization with PyNumero and Parapint

We describe PyNumero, an open-source, object-oriented programming framework in Python that supports rapid development of performant parallel algorithms for structured nonlinear programming problems (NLP’s) using the Message Passing Interface (MPI). PyNumero provides three fundamental building blocks for developing NLP algorithms: a fast interface for calculating first and second derivatives with the AMPL Solver Library (ASL), … Read more

A quasi-Newton method with Wolfe line searches for multiobjective optimization

We propose a BFGS method with Wolfe line searches for unconstrained multiobjective optimization problems. The algorithm is well defined even for general nonconvex problems. Global convergence and R-linear convergence to a Pareto optimal point are established for strongly convex problems. In the local convergence analysis, if the objective functions are locally strongly convex with Lipschitz … Read more

An extended delayed weighted gradient algorithm for solving strongly convex optimization problems

The recently developed delayed weighted gradient method (DWGM) is competitive with the well-known conjugate gradient (CG) method for the minimization of strictly convex quadratic functions. As well as the CG method, DWGM has some key optimality and orthogonality properties that justify its practical performance. The main difference with the CG method is that, instead of … Read more

A Cubic Regularization of Newton’s Method with Finite-Difference Hessian Approximations

In this paper, we present a version of the Cubic Regularization of Newton’s method for unconstrained nonconvex optimization, in which the Hessian matrices are approximated by forward finite difference Hessians. The regularization parameter of the cubic models and the accuracy of the Hessian approximations are jointly adjusted using a nonmonotone line-search criterion. Assuming that the … Read more

Nonlinear matrix recovery using optimization on the Grassmann manifold

We investigate the problem of recovering a partially observed high-rank matrix whose columns obey a nonlinear structure such as a union of subspaces, an algebraic variety or grouped in clusters. The recovery problem is formulated as the rank minimization of a nonlinear feature map applied to the original matrix, which is then further approximated by … Read more

Two limited-memory optimization methods with minimum violation of the previous quasi-Newton equations

Limited-memory variable metric methods based on the well-known BFGS update are widely used for large scale optimization. The block version of the BFGS update, derived by Schnabel (1983), Hu and Storey (1991) and Vl·cek and Luk·san (2019), satis¯es the quasi-Newton equations with all used di®erence vectors and for quadratic objective functions gives the best improvement … Read more

SABRINA: A Stochastic Subspace Majorization-Minimization Algorithm

A wide class of problems involves the minimization of a coercive and differentiable function $F$ on $\mathbb{R}^N$ whose gradient cannot be evaluated in an exact manner. In such context, many existing convergence results from standard gradient-based optimization literature cannot be directly applied and robustness to errors in the gradient is not necessarily guaranteed. This work … Read more