Iterative Hard Thresholding Methods for $ Regularized Convex Cone Programming

In this paper we consider $l_0$ regularized convex cone programming problems. In particular, we first propose an iterative hard thresholding (IHT) method and its variant for solving $l_0$ regularized box constrained convex programming. We show that the sequence generated by these methods converges to a local minimizer. Also, we establish the iteration complexity of the … Read more

Complexity of Ten Decision Problems in Continuous Time Dynamical Systems

We show that for continuous time dynamical systems described by polynomial differential equations of modest degree (typically equal to three), the following decision problems which arise in numerous areas of systems and control theory cannot have a polynomial time (or even pseudo-polynomial time) algorithm unless P=NP: local attractivity of an equilibrium point, stability of an … Read more

Modified Orbital Branching with Applications to Orbitopes and to Unit Commitment

The past decade has seen advances in general methods for symmetry breaking in mixed-integer linear programming. These methods are advantageous for general problems with general symmetry groups. Some important classes of MILP problems, such as bin packing and graph coloring, contain highly structured symmetry groups. This observation has motivated the development of problem-specific techniques. In … Read more

Minimal Representation of Insurance Prices

This paper addresses law invariant coherent risk measures and their Kusuoka representations. By elaborating the existence of a minimal representation we show that every Kusuoka representation can be reduced to its minimal representation. Uniqueness — in a sense specified in the paper — of the risk measure’s Kusuoka representation is derived from this initial result. … Read more

Valid Inequalities Based on Demand Propagation for Chemical Production Scheduling MIP Models

The planning of chemical production often involves the optimization of the size of the tasks to be performed subject to unit capacity constraints, as well as inventory constraints for intermediate materials. While several mixed-integer programming (MIP) models have been proposed that account for these features, the development of tightening methods for these formulations has received … Read more

Quadratic combinatorial optimization using separable underestimators

Binary programs with a quadratic objective function are NP-hard in general, even if the linear optimization problem over the same feasible set is tractable. In this paper, we address such problems by computing quadratic global underestimators of the objective function that are separable but not necessarily convex. Exploiting the binary constraint on the variables, a … Read more

Hybrid LP/SDP Bounding Procedure

The principal idea of this paper is to exploit Semidefinite Programming (SDP) relaxation within the framework provided by Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) solvers when tackling Binary Quadratic Problems (BQP). SDP relaxation is well-known to provide strong bounds for BQP in practice. However, the method is not typically implemented in many state-of-the-art MINLP solvers based … Read more

Obtaining Quadratic Models of Noisy Functions

When derivatives of a nonlinear objective function are unavailable, many derivative- free optimization algorithms rely on interpolation-based models of the function. But what if the function values are contaminated by noise, as in most of the simulation- based problems typically encountered in this area? We propose to obtain linear and quadratic models by using knowledge … Read more

Optimizing Placement of Stationary Monitors

We examine the problem of placing stationary monitors in a continuous space, with the goal of minimizing an adversary’s maximum probability of traversing an origin-destination route without being detected. The problem arises, for instance, in defending against the transport of illicit material through some area of interest. In particular, we consider the deployment of monitors … Read more

Solving large scale polynomial convex problems on \ell_1/nuclear norm balls by randomized first-order algorithms

One of the most attractive recent approaches to processing well-structured large-scale convex optimization problems is based on smooth convex-concave saddle point reformulation of the problem of interest and solving the resulting problem by a fast First Order saddle point method utilizing smoothness of the saddle point cost function. In this paper, we demonstrate that when … Read more