A Fully Stochastic Second-Order Trust Region Method

A stochastic second-order trust region method is proposed, which can be viewed as a second-order extension of the trust-region-ish (TRish) algorithm proposed by Curtis et al. [INFORMS J. Optim. 1(3) 200–220, 2019]. In each iteration, a search direction is computed by (approximately) solving a trust region subproblem defined by stochastic gradient and Hessian estimates. The … Read more

Multi-objective Optimization Based Algorithms for Solving Mixed Integer Linear Minimum Multiplicative Programs

We present two new algorithms for a class of single-objective non-linear optimization problems, the so-called Mixed Integer Linear minimum Multiplicative Programs (MIL-mMPs). This class of optimization problems has a desirable characteristic: a MIL-mMP can be viewed as a special case of the problem of optimization over the efficient set in multi-objective optimization. The proposed algorithms … Read more

Polynomial Size IP Formulations of Knapsack May Require Exponentially Large Coefficients

A desirable property of integer formulations is to consist of few inequalities having small coefficients. We show that these targets are conflicting by proving the existence of knapsack sets that need exponentially many inequalities or exponentially large coefficients in any integer formulation. Moreover, we show that there exist undirected graphs such that (in a natural … Read more

Superiorization vs. Accelerated Convex Optimization: The Superiorized/Regularized Least-Squares Case

In this paper we conduct a study of both superiorization and optimization approaches for the reconstruction problem of superiorized/regularized solutions to underdetermined systems of linear equations with nonnegativity variable bounds. Specifically, we study a (smoothed) total variation regularized least-squares problem with nonnegativity constraints. We consider two approaches: (a) a superiorization approach that, in contrast to … Read more

Randomized Sketching Algorithms for Low Memory Dynamic Optimization

This paper develops a novel limited-memory method to solve dynamic optimization problems. The memory requirements for such problems often present a major obstacle, particularly for problems with PDE constraints such as optimal flow control, full waveform inversion, and optical tomography. In these problems, PDE constraints uniquely determine the state of a physical system for a … Read more

Optimization of noisy blackboxes with adaptive precision

In derivative-free and blackbox optimization, the objective function is often evaluated through the execution of a computer program seen as a blackbox. It can be noisy, in the sense that its outputs are contaminated by random errors. Sometimes, the source of these errors is identified and controllable, in the sense that it is possible to … Read more

Deciding Feasibility of a Booking in the European Gas Market on a Cycle is in P for the Case of Passive Networks

We show that the feasibility of a booking in the European entry-exit gas market can be decided in polynomial time on single-cycle networks that are passive, i.e., do not contain controllable elements. The feasibility of a booking can be characterized by solving polynomially many nonlinear potential-based flow models for computing so-called potential-difference maximizing load flow … Read more

A Generalized Worst-Case Complexity Analysis for Non-Monotone Line Searches

We study the worst-case complexity of a non-monotone line search framework that covers a wide variety of known techniques published in the literature. In this framework, the non-monotonicity is controlled by a sequence of nonnegative parameters. We obtain complexity bounds to achieve approximate first-order optimality even when this sequence is not summable. ArticleDownload View PDF

Optimal time-and-level-of-use price setting for an energy retailer

This paper presents a novel price setting optimization problem for an energy retailer in the smart grid. In this framework the retailer buys energy from multiple generators via bilateral contracts, and sells it to a population of smart homes using Time-and-Level-of-Use prices (TLOU). TLOU is an energy price structure recently introduced in the literature, where … Read more

Online matrix factorization for Markovian data and applications to Network Dictionary Learning

Online Matrix Factorization (OMF) is a fundamental tool for dictionary learning problems, giving an approximate representation of complex data sets in terms of a reduced number of extracted features. Convergence guarantees for most of the OMF algorithms in the literature assume independence between data matrices, and the case of a dependent data stream remains largely … Read more