The Inexact Restoration approach has proved to be an adequate tool for handling the problem of minimizing an expensive function within an arbitrary feasible set by using different degrees of precision in the objective function. The Inexact Restoration framework allows one to obtain suitable convergence and complexity results for an approach that rationally combines low- … Read more
We consider the bound-constrained global optimization of functions with low effective dimensionality, that are constant along an (unknown) linear subspace and only vary over the effective (complement) subspace. We aim to implicitly explore the intrinsic low dimensionality of the constrained landscape using feasible random embeddings, in order to understand and improve the scalability of algorithms … Read more
This paper is concerned with the inexact variable metric method for solving convex-constrained optimization problems. At each iteration of this method, the search direction is obtained by inexactly minimizing a strictly convex quadratic function over the closed convex feasible set. Here, we propose a new inexactness criterion for the search direction subproblems. Under mild assumptions, … Read more
A small polygon is a polygon of unit diameter. The maximal area of a small polygon with $n=2m$ vertices is not known when $m\ge 7$. Finding the largest small $n$-gon for a given number $n\ge 3$ can be formulated as a nonconvex quadratically constrained quadratic optimization problem. We propose to solve this problem with a … Read more
We consider a nonconvex optimization problem consisting of maximizing the difference of two convex functions. We present a randomized method that requires low computational effort at each iteration. The described method is a randomized coordinate descent method employed on the so-called Toland-dual problem. We prove subsequence convergence to dual stationarity points, a new notion that … Read more
In this paper, a new randomized solver (called VRDFON) for noisy unconstrained derivative-free optimization (DFO) problems is discussed. Complexity result in the presence of noise for nonconvex functions is studied. Two effective ingredients of VRDFON are an improved derivative-free line search algorithm with many heuristic enhancements and quadratic models in adaptively determined subspaces. Numerical results … Read more
In this paper, we study smooth stochastic multi-level composition optimization problems, where the objective function is a nested composition of $T$ functions. We assume access to noisy evaluations of the functions and their gradients, through a stochastic first-order oracle. For solving this class of problems, we propose two algorithms using moving-average stochastic estimates, and analyze … Read more
Coordinate descent methods with high-order regularized models for box-constrained minimization are introduced. High-order stationarity asymptotic convergence and first-order stationarity worst-case evaluation complexity bounds are established. The computer work that is necessary for obtaining first-order $\varepsilon$-stationarity with respect to the variables of each coordinate-descent block is $O(\varepsilon^{-(p+1)/p})$ whereas the computer work for getting first-order $\varepsilon$-stationarity with … Read more
In this paper, we present a limited-memory common-directions method for smooth optimization that interpolates between first- and second- order methods. At each iteration, a subspace of a limited dimension size is constructed using first-order information from previous iterations, and an ef- ficient Newton method is deployed to find an approximate minimizer within this subspace. With … Read more
We show that the global minimum (resp. maximum) of a continuous func- tion on a compact set can be approximated from above (resp. from below) by computing the smallest (rest. largest) eigenvalue of a hierarchy of (r × r) tri-diagonal matrices of increasing size. Equivalently it reduces to computing the smallest (resp. largest) root of … Read more