Stochastic Approximations and Perturbations in Forward-Backward Splitting for Monotone Operators

We investigate the asymptotic behavior of a stochastic version of the forward-backward splitting algorithm for finding a zero of the sum of a maximally monotone set-valued operator and a cocoercive operator in Hilbert spaces. Our general setting features stochastic approximations of the cocoercive operator and stochastic perturbations in the evaluation of the resolvents of the … Read more

Uniform Convergence of Sample Average Approximation with Adaptive Importance Sampling

We study sample average approximations under adaptive importance sampling. Based on a Banach-space-valued martingale strong law of large numbers, we establish uniform convergence of the sample average approximation to the function being approximated. In the optimization context, we obtain convergence of the optimal value and optimal solutions of the sample average approximation. Citation Technical Report … Read more

BOUNDS AND APPROXIMATIONS FOR MULTISTAGE STOCHASTIC PROGRAMS

Consider (typically large) multistage stochastic programs, which are defined on scenario trees as the basic data structure. It is well known that the computational complexity of the solution depends on the size of the tree, which itself increases typically exponentially fast with its height, i.e. the number of decision stages. For this reason approximations which … Read more

Data-Driven Risk-Averse Two-Stage Stochastic Program with ζ-Structure Probability Metrics

The traditional two-stage stochastic programming approach assumes the distribution of the random parameter in a problem is known. In most practices, however, the distribution is actually unknown. Instead, only a series of historic data are available. In this paper, we develop a data-driven stochastic optimization approach to providing a risk-averse decision making under uncertainty. In … Read more

Randomized Derivative-Free Optimization of Noisy Convex Functions

We propose STARS, a randomized derivative-free algorithm for unconstrained optimization when the function evaluations are contaminated with random noise. STARS takes dynamic, noise-adjusted smoothing step-sizes that minimize the least-squares error between the true directional derivative of a noisy function and its finite difference approximation. We provide a convergence rate analysis of STARS for solving convex … Read more

Nonlinear chance constrained problems: optimality conditions, regularization and solvers

We deal with chance constrained problems (CCP) with differentiable nonlinear random functions and discrete distribution. We allow nonconvex functions both in the constraints and in the objective. We reformulate the problem as a mixed-integer nonlinear program, and relax the integer variables into continuous ones. We approach the relaxed problem as a mathematical problem with complementarity … Read more

A Stabilised Scenario Decomposition Algorithm Applied to Stochastic Unit Commitment Problems

In recent years the expansion of energy supplies from volatile renewable sources has triggered an increased interest in stochastic optimization models for hydro-thermal unit commitment. Several studies have modelled this as a two-stage or multi-stage stochastic mixed-integer optimization problem. Solving such problems directly is computationally intractable for large instances, and alternative approaches are required. In … Read more

The Value of Stochastic Programming in Day-Ahead and Intraday Generation Unit Commitment

The recent expansion of renewable energy supplies has prompted the development of a variety of efficient stochastic optimization models and solution techniques for hydro-thermal scheduling. However, little has been published about the added value of stochastic models over deterministic ones. In the context of day-ahead and intraday unit commitment under wind uncertainty, we compare two-stage … Read more

Existence of Nash equilibrium for Chance-Constrained Games

We consider an n-player strategic game with finite action sets. The payoffs of each player are random variables. We assume that each player uses a satisficing payoff criterion defined by a chance-constraint, i.e., players face a chance- constrained game. We consider the cases where payoffs follow normal and elliptically symmetric distributions. For both cases we … Read more

A Distributionally-robust Approach for Finding Support Vector Machines

The classical SVM is an optimization problem minimizing the hinge losses of mis-classified samples with the regularization term. When the sample size is small or data has noise, it is possible that the classifier obtained with training data may not generalize well to pop- ulation, since the samples may not accurately represent the true population … Read more