Asymptotical Analysis of a SAA Estimator for Optimal Value of a Two Stage Problem with Quadratic Recourse

In this paper, we first consider the stability analysis of a convex quadratic programming problem and its restricted Wolfe dual in which all parameters in the problem are perturbed. We demonstrate the upper semi-continuity of solution mappings for the primal problem and the restricted Wolfe dual problem and establish the Hadamard directionally differentiability of the … Read more

Regularized monotonic regression

Monotonic (isotonic) Regression (MR) is a powerful tool used for solving a wide range of important applied problems. One of its features, which poses a limitation on its use in some areas, is that it produces a piecewise constant fitted response. For smoothing the fitted response, we introduce a regularization term in the MR formulated … Read more

Solving Box-Constrained Nonconvex Quadratic Programs

We present effective computational techniques for solving nonconvex quadratic programs with box constraints (BoxQP). We first observe that cutting planes obtained from the Boolean Quadric Polytope (BQP) are computationally effective at reducing the optimality gap of BoxQP. We next show that the Chvatal-Gomory closure of the BQP is given by the odd-cycle inequalities even when … Read more

Kronecker Product Constraints for Semidefinite Optimization

We consider semidefinite optimization problems that include constraints that G(x) and H(x) are positive semidefinite (PSD), where the components of the symmetric matrices G(x) and H(x) are affine functions of an n-vector x. In such a case we obtain a new constraint that a matrix K(x,X) is PSD, where the components of K(x,X) are affine … Read more

Piecewise Parametric Structure in the Pooling Problem – from Sparse Strongly-Polynomial Solutions to NP-Hardness

The standard pooling problem is a NP-hard sub-class of non-convex quadratically-constrained optimization problems that commonly arises in process systems engineering applications. We take a parametric approach to uncovering topological structure and sparsity of the standard pooling problem in its p-formulation. The structure uncovered in this approach validates Professor Christodoulos A. Floudas’ intuition that pooling problems … Read more

A fresh CP look at mixed-binary QPs: New formulations and relaxations

Triggered by Burer’s seminal characterization from 2009, many copositive (CP) reformulations of mixed-binary QPs have been discussed by now. Most of them can be used as proper relaxations, if the intractable co(mpletely )positive cones are replaced by tractable approximations. While the widely used approximation hierarchies have the disadvantage to use positive-semidefinite (psd) matrices of orders … Read more

The complexity of simple models – a study of worst and typical hard cases for the Standard Quadratic Optimization Problem

In a Standard Quadratic Optimization Problem (StQP), a possibly indefinite quadratic form (the simplest nonlinear function) is extremized over the standard simplex, the simplest polytope. Despite this simplicity, the nonconvex instances of this problem class allow for remarkably rich patterns of coexisting local solutions, which are closely related to practical difficulties in solving StQPs globally. … Read more

A Second-Order Cone Based Approach for Solving the Trust Region Subproblem and Its Variants

We study the trust region subproblem (TRS) of minimizing a nonconvex quadratic function over the unit ball with additional conic constraints. Despite having a nonconvex objective, it is known that the TRS and a number of its variants are polynomial-time solvable. In this paper, we follow a second-order cone based approach to derive an exact … Read more

A robust Lagrangian-DNN method for a class of quadratic optimization problems

The Lagrangian-doubly nonnegative (DNN) relaxation has recently been shown to provide effective lower bounds for a large class of nonconvex quadratic optimization problems (QOPs) using the bisection method combined with first-order methods by Kim, Kojima and Toh in 2016. While the bisection method has demonstrated the computational efficiency, determining the validity of a computed lower … Read more

A Dual Gradient-Projection Method for Large-Scale Strictly Convex Quadratic Problems

The details of a solver for minimizing a strictly convex quadratic objective function subject to general linear constraints is presented. The method uses a gradient projection algorithm enhanced with subspace acceleration to solve the bound-constrained dual optimization problem. Such gradient projection methods are well-known, but are typically employed to solve the primal problem when only … Read more