Design of Poisoning Attacks on Linear Regression Using Bilevel Optimization

Poisoning attack is one of the attack types commonly studied in the field of adversarial machine learning. The adversary generating poison attacks is assumed to have access to the training process of a machine learning algorithm and aims to prevent the algorithm from functioning properly by injecting manipulative data while the algorithm is being trained. … Read more

A Benders-type Approach for Robust Optimization of Kidney Exchanges under Full Recourse

The goal of kidney exchange programs is to match recipients with a willing but incompatible donor with another compatible donor, so as to maximize total (weighted) transplants. There is significant uncertainty in this process, as planned transplants may be cancelled for a variety of reasons. Planning exchanges while considering failures, and options for recourse, is … Read more

Proximal Point Algorithm on the Stiefel Manifold

In this paper, we consider the problem of minimizing a continuously differentiable function on the Stiefel manifold. To solve this problem, we develop a geodesic-free proximal point algorithm, which does not require the use of the Riemannian distance. The proposed method can be regarded as an iterative fixed-point method, which repeatedly applies a proximal operator … Read more

Retail Store Layout Optimization for Maximum Product Visibility

It is well-established that increased product visibility to shoppers leads to higher sales for retailers. In this study, we propose an optimization methodology which assigns product categories and subcategories to store locations and sublocations to maximize the overall visibility of products to shoppers. The methodology is hierarchically developed to meet strategic and tactical layout planning … Read more

Adaptive Regularization Minimization Algorithms with Non-Smooth Norms

A regularization algorithm (AR1pGN) for unconstrained nonlinear minimization is considered, which uses a model consisting of a Taylor expansion of arbitrary degree and regularization term involving a possibly non smooth norm. It is shown that the non-smoothness of the norm does not affect the O(\epsilon_1^{-(p+1)/p}) upper bound on evaluation complexity for finding first-order \epsilon_1-approximate minimizers … Read more

Central Limit Theorem and Sample Complexity of Stationary Stochastic Programs

In this paper we discuss sample complexity of solving stationary stochastic programs by the Sample Average Approximation (SAA) method. We investigate this in the framework of Optimal Control (in discrete time) setting. In particular we derive a Central Limit Theorem type asymptotics for the optimal values of the SAA problems. The main conclusion is that … Read more

The Stochastic Pseudo-Star Degree Centrality Problem

We introduce the stochastic pseudo-star degree centrality problem, which focuses on a novel probabilistic group-based centrality metric. The goal is to identify a feasible induced pseudo-star, which is defined as a collection of nodes forming a star network with a certain probability, such that it maximizes the sum of the individual probabilities of unique assignments … Read more

Optimal Convergence Rates for the Proximal Bundle Method

We study convergence rates of the classic proximal bundle method for a variety of nonsmooth convex optimization problems. We show that, without any modification, this algorithm adapts to converge faster in the presence of smoothness or a Hölder growth condition. Our analysis reveals that with a constant stepsize, the bundle method is adaptive, yet it … Read more

An Upper Bound on the Hausdorff Distance Between a Pareto Set and its Discretization in Bi-Objective Convex Quadratic Optimization

We provide upper bounds on the Hausdorff distances between the efficient set and its discretization in the decision space, and between the Pareto set (also called the Pareto front) and its discretization in the objective space, in the context of bi-objective convex quadratic optimization on a compact feasible set. Our results imply that if t … Read more

Batch Learning in Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming

We consider the stochastic dual dynamic programming (SDDP) algorithm, which is a widely employed algorithm applied to multistage stochastic programming, and propose a variant using batch learning, a technique used with success in the reinforcement learning framework. We cast SDDP as a type of Q-learning algorithm and describe its application in both risk neutral and … Read more