An Adaptive Partition-based Approach for Solving Two-stage Stochastic Programs with Fixed Recourse

We study an adaptive partition-based approach for solving two-stage stochastic programs with fixed recourse. A partition-based formulation is a relaxation of the original stochastic program, and we study a finitely converging algorithm in which the partition is adaptively adjusted until it yields an optimal solution. A solution guided refinement strategy is developed to refine the … Read more

Stochastic Quasi-Newton Methods for Nonconvex Stochastic Optimization

In this paper we study stochastic quasi-Newton methods for nonconvex stochastic optimization, where we assume that only stochastic information of the gradients of the objective function is available via a stochastic first-order oracle (SFO). Firstly, we propose a general framework of stochastic quasi-Newton methods for solving nonconvex stochastic optimization. The proposed framework extends the classic … Read more

Sample approximations of multiobjective stochastic optimization problems

The article describes approximation technique for solving multiobjective stochastic optimization problems. As a generalized model of a stochastic system to be optimized a vector “input — random output” system is used. Random outputs are converted into a vector of deterministic performance/risk indicators. The problem is to find those inputs that correspond to Pareto-optimal values of … Read more

A note on sample complexity of multistage stochastic programs

We derive a \emph{lower bound} for the \emph{sample complexity} of the Sample Average Approximation method for a certain class of multistage stochastic optimization problems. In previous works, \emph{upper bounds} for such problems were derived. We show that the dependence of the \emph{lower bound} with respect to the complexity parameters and the problem’s data are comparable … Read more

Process-Based Risk Measures for Observable and Partially Observable Discrete-Time Controlled Systems

For controlled discrete-time stochastic processes we introduce a new class of dynamic risk measures, which we call process-based. Their main features are that they measure risk of processes that are functions of the history of the base process. We introduce a new concept of conditional stochastic time consistency and we derive the structure of process-based … Read more

Stochastic Compositional Gradient Descent: Algorithms for Minimizing Compositions of Expected-Value Functions

Classical stochastic gradient methods are well suited for minimizing expected-value objective functions. However, they do not apply to the minimization of a nonlinear function involving expected values or a composition of two expected-value functions, i.e., problems of the form $\min_x \E_v\[f_v\big(\E_w [g_w(x)]\big) \]$. In order to solve this stochastic composition problem, we propose a class … Read more

A NEW PARTIAL SAMPLE AVERAGE APPROXIMATION METHOD FOR CHANCE CONSTRAINED PROBLEM

In this paper, we present a new scheme of a sampling method to solve chance constrained programs. First of all, a modified sample average approximation, namely Partial Sample Average Approximation (PSAA) is presented. The main advantage of our approach is that the PSAA problem has only continuous variables whilst the standard sample average approximation (SAA) … Read more

Totally Unimodular Multistage Stochastic Programs

We consider totally unimodular multistage stochastic programs, that is, multistage stochastic programs whose extensive-form constraint matrices are totally unimodular. We establish several sufficient conditions and identify examples that have arisen in the literature. Citation Ruichen (Richard) Sun, Oleg V. Shylo, Andrew J. Schaefer, Totally unimodular multistage stochastic programs, Operations Research Letters, Volume 43, Issue 1, … Read more

Rectangular sets of probability measures

In this paper we consider the notion of rectangularity of a set of probability measures, introduced in Epstein and Schneider (2003), from a somewhat different point of view. We define rectangularity as a property of dynamic decomposition of a distributionally robust stochastic optimization problem and show how it relates to the modern theory of coherent … Read more

Sequential Bounding Methods for Two-Stage Stochastic Programs

Citation Alexander H. Gose Graduate Program of Operations Research, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, ahgose@ncsu.edu Brian T. Denton Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, btdenton@umich.edu October 17, 2014 (Accepted for publication to INFORMS Journal on Computing)