A note on the squared slack variables technique for nonlinear optimization

In constrained nonlinear optimization, the squared slack variables can be used to transform a problem with inequality constraints into a problem containing only equality constraints. This reformulation is usually not considered in the modern literature, mainly because of possible numerical instabilities. However, this argument only concerns the development of algorithms, and nothing stops us in … Read more

On Decomposability of Multilinear Sets

In this paper, we consider the Multilinear set defined as the set of binary points satisfying a collection of multilinear equations. Such sets appear in factorable reformulations of many types of nonconvex optimization problems, including binary polynomial optimization. A great simplification in studying the facial structure of the convex hull of the Multilinear set is … Read more

On Approximation Algorithms for Concave Mixed-Integer Quadratic Programming

Concave Mixed-Integer Quadratic Programming is the problem of minimizing a concave quadratic polynomial over the mixed-integer points in a polyhedral region. In this work we describe an algorithm that finds an ε-approximate solution to a Concave Mixed-Integer Quadratic Programming problem. The running time of the proposed algorithm is polynomial in the size of the problem … Read more

Branch-and-Cut approaches for p-Cluster Editing

This paper deals with a variant of the well-known Cluster Editing Problem (CEP), more precisely, the \textit{p}-CEP, in which a given input graph should be edited by adding and/or removing edges in such a way that \textit{p} vertex-disjoint cliques (clusters) are generated with the minimum number of editions. We introduce several valid inequalities where some … Read more

pyomo.dae: A Modeling and Automatic Discretization Framework for Optimization with Differential and Algebraic Equations

We describe pyomo.dae, an open source Python-based modeling framework that enables high-level abstract specification of optimization problems with differential and algebraic equations. The pyomo.dae framework is integrated with the Pyomo open source algebraic modeling language, and is available at http: //www.pyomo.org. One key feature of pyomo.dae is that it does not restrict users to standard, … Read more

A feasible rounding approach for granular optimization problems

We introduce a new technique to generate good feasible points of mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problems. It makes use of the so-called inner parallel set of the relaxed feasible set, which was employed in O. Stein, Error bounds for mixed integer linear optimization problems, Mathematical Programming, Vol. 156 (2016), 101-123, as well as O. Stein, Error … Read more

A CVaR Scenario-based Framework: Minimizing Downside Risk of Multi-asset Class Portfolios

Multi-asset class (MAC) portfolios can be comprised of investments in equities, fixed-income, commodities, foreign-exchange, credit, derivatives, and alternatives such as real-estate and private equity. The return for such {\em non-linear} portfolios is {\em asymmetric} with significant tail risk. The traditional Markowitz Mean-Variance Optimization (MVO) framework, that linearizes all the assets in the portfolio and uses … Read more

Piecewise Parametric Structure in the Pooling Problem – from Sparse Strongly-Polynomial Solutions to NP-Hardness

The standard pooling problem is a NP-hard sub-class of non-convex quadratically-constrained optimization problems that commonly arises in process systems engineering applications. We take a parametric approach to uncovering topological structure and sparsity of the standard pooling problem in its p-formulation. The structure uncovered in this approach validates Professor Christodoulos A. Floudas’ intuition that pooling problems … Read more

Barzilai-Borwein Step Size for Stochastic Gradient Descent

One of the major issues in stochastic gradient descent (SGD) methods is how to choose an appropriate step size while running the algorithm. Since the traditional line search technique does not apply for stochastic optimization algorithms, the common practice in SGD is either to use a diminishing step size, or to tune a fixed step … Read more

A fresh CP look at mixed-binary QPs: New formulations and relaxations

Triggered by Burer’s seminal characterization from 2009, many copositive (CP) reformulations of mixed-binary QPs have been discussed by now. Most of them can be used as proper relaxations, if the intractable co(mpletely )positive cones are replaced by tractable approximations. While the widely used approximation hierarchies have the disadvantage to use positive-semidefinite (psd) matrices of orders … Read more