Oracle Complexity of Second-Order Methods for Smooth Convex Optimization

Second-order methods, which utilize gradients as well as Hessians to optimize a given function, are of major importance in mathematical optimization. In this work, we study the oracle complexity of such methods, or equivalently, the number of iterations required to optimize a function to a given accuracy. Focusing on smooth and convex functions, we derive … Read more

Distributionally Robust Markovian Traffic Equilibrium

Stochastic user equilibrium models are fundamental to the analysis of transportation systems. Such models are typically developed under the assumption of route based choice models for the users. A class of link based models under a Markovian assumption on the route choice behavior of the users has been proposed to deal with the drawbacks of … Read more

An Inexact Newton-like conditional gradient method for constrained nonlinear systems

In this paper, we propose an inexact Newton-like conditional gradient method for solving constrained systems of nonlinear equations. The local convergence of the new method as well as results on its rate are established by using a general majorant condition. Two applications of such condition are provided: one is for functions whose the derivative satisfies … Read more

Size Matters: Cardinality-Constrained Clustering and Outlier Detection via Conic Optimization

Plain vanilla K-means clustering is prone to produce unbalanced clusters and suffers from outlier sensitivity. To mitigate both shortcomings, we formulate a joint outlier-detection and clustering problem, which assigns a prescribed number of datapoints to an auxiliary outlier cluster and performs cardinality-constrained K-means clustering on the residual dataset. We cast this problem as a mixed-integer … Read more

Error bounds for rank constrained optimization problems and applications

This paper is concerned with the rank constrained optimization problem whose feasible set is the intersection of the rank constraint set $\mathcal{R}=\!\big\{X\in\mathbb{X}\ |\ {\rm rank}(X)\le \kappa\big\}$ and a closed convex set $\Omega$. We establish the local (global) Lipschitzian type error bounds for estimating the distance from any $X\in \Omega$ ($X\in\mathbb{X}$) to the feasible set and … Read more

Exact penalty decomposition method for zero-norm minimization based on MPEC formulation

We reformulate the zero-norm minimization problem as an equivalent mathematical program with equilibrium constraints and establish that its penalty problem, induced by adding the complementarity constraint to the objective, is exact. Then, by the special structure of the exact penalty problem, we propose a decomposition method that can seek a global optimal solution of the … Read more

Integrated Generator Maintenance and Operations Scheduling under Uncertain Failure Times

Planning maintenances and operations is an important concern in power systems. Although optimization based joint maintenance and operations scheduling is studied in the literature, sudden disruptions due to random generator failures are not considered. In this paper we propose a stochastic mixed-integer programming approach for integrated condition-based maintenance and operations scheduling problem for a fleet … Read more

Optimality of orders one to three and beyond: characterization and evaluation complexity in constrained nonconvex optimization

Necessary conditions for high-order optimality in smooth nonlinear constrained optimization are explored and their inherent intricacy discussed. A two-phase minimization algorithm is proposed which can achieve approximate first-, second- and third-order criticality and its evaluation complexity is analyzed as a function of the choice (among existing methods) of an inner algorithm for solving subproblems in … Read more

A pattern search and implicit filtering algorithm for solving linearly constrained minimization problems with noisy objective functions

PSIFA -Pattern Search and Implicit Filtering Algorithm- is a derivative-free algorithm that has been designed for linearly constrained problems with noise in the objective function. It combines some elements of the pattern search approach of Lewis and Torczon (2000) with ideas from the method of implicit filtering of Kelley (2011) enhanced with a further analysis … Read more

Lower Bound On the Computational Complexity of Discounted Markov Decision Problems

We study the computational complexity of the infinite-horizon discounted-reward Markov Decision Problem (MDP) with a finite state space $\cS$ and a finite action space $\cA$. We show that any randomized algorithm needs a running time at least $\Omega(\carS^2\carA)$ to compute an $\epsilon$-optimal policy with high probability. We consider two variants of the MDP where the … Read more