The state of numerical computing is currently characterized by a divide between highly efficient yet typically cumbersome low-level languages such as C, C++, and Fortran and highly expressive yet typically slow high-level languages such as Python and MATLAB. This paper explores how Julia, a modern programming language for numerical computing which claims to bridge this … Read more
Several variations of index selection rules for simplex type algorithms for linear programming, like the Last-In-First-Out or the Most-Often-Selected-Variable are rules not only theoretically finite, but also provide significant flexibility in choosing a pivot element. Based on an implementation of the primal simplex and the monotonic build-up (MBU) simplex method, the practical benefit of the … Read more
We study the runtime performance of three types of random-key genetic algorithms: the unbiased algorithm of Bean (1994); the biased algorithm of Gonçalves and Resende (2011); and a greedy version of Bean’s algorithm on 12 instances from four types of covering problems: general-cost set covering, Steiner triple covering, general-cost set K-covering, and unit-cost covering by … Read more
In this paper, we consider a first-order block-decomposition method for minimizing the sum of a convex differentiable function with Lipschitz continuous gradient, and two other proper closed convex (possibly, nonsmooth) functions with easily computable resolvents. The method presented contains two important ingredients from a computational point of view, namely: an adaptive choice of stepsize for … Read more
The problem of finding a minimum l^1-norm solution to an underdetermined linear system is an important problem in compressed sensing, where it is also known as basis pursuit. We propose a heuristic optimality check as a general tool for l^1-minimization, which often allows for early termination by “guessing” a primal-dual optimal pair based on an … Read more
Parametric Active Set Methods (PASM) are a relatively new class of methods to solve convex Quadratic Programming (QP) problems. They are based on tracing the solution along a linear homotopy between a QP with known solution and the QP to be solved. We explicitly identify numerical challenges in PASM and develop strategies to meet these … Read more
Current successful methods for solving semidefinite programs, SDP, are based on primal-dual interior-point approaches. These usually involve a symmetrization step to allow for application of Newton’s method followed by block elimination to reduce the size of the Newton equation. Both these steps create ill-conditioning in the Newton equation and singularity of the Jacobian of the … Read more
This work gives an overview over the major codes available for the solution of linear semidefinite (SDP) and second-order cone (SOCP) programs. Some developments since the 7th DIMACS Challenge [9, 17] are pointed out as well as some currently under way. Instead of presenting per- formance tables, reference is made to the ongoing benchmark [19] … Read more
We describe a collection of test problems which have been used to develop and test data fitting software for identifying parameters in explicit model functions, dynamical systems of equations, Laplace transformations, systems of ordinary differential equations, differential algebraic equations, or systems of one-dimensional time-dependent partial differential equations with or without algebraic equations. The test cases … Read more
The availability of nonlinear programming test problems is extremely important to test optimization codes or to develop new algorithms. We describe the usage of the Fortran subroutines for all 306 test problems of two previous collections of the author, see Hock and Schittkowski (1981) and Schittkowski (1987). For each test example, we provide an optimal … Read more