Projected Stochastic Momentum Methods for Nonlinear Equality-Constrained Optimization for Machine Learning

Two algorithms are proposed, analyzed, and tested for solving continuous optimization problems with nonlinear equality constraints. Each is an extension of a stochastic momentum-based method from the unconstrained setting to the setting of a stochastic Newton-SQP-type algorithm for solving equality-constrained problems. One is an extension of the heavy-ball method and the other is an extension … Read more

Contextual Distributionally Robust Optimization with Causal and Continuous Structure: An Interpretable and Tractable Approach

In this paper, we introduce a framework for contextual distributionally robust optimization (DRO) that considers the causal and continuous structure of the underlying distribution by developing interpretable and tractable decision rules that prescribe decisions using covariates. We first introduce the causal Sinkhorn discrepancy (CSD), an entropy-regularized causal Wasserstein distance that encourages continuous transport plans while … Read more

The Generalized Group Steiner Tree Problem with Logical Side Constraints

In this work, we study a recent extension to the well-known Steiner tree problem: the Generalized Group Steiner Tree problem with logical side constraints. In this variant, we aim to identify a tree of minimum total cost, that spans a given set of groups of nodes, like in the traditional Group Steiner Tree problem. However, … Read more

A single loop method for quadratic minmax optimization

We consider a quadratic minmax problem with coupled inner constraints and propose a method to compute a class of stationary points. To motivate the need to compute such stationary points, we first show that they are meaningful, in the sense that they can be locally optimal for our problem under suitable linear independence and second-order … Read more

First-order Methods for Unconstrained Vector Optimization Problems: A Unified Majorization-Minimization Perspective

In this paper, we develop a unified majorization-minimization scheme and convergence analysis with first-order surrogate functions for unconstrained vector optimization problems (VOPs). By selecting different surrogate functions, the unified method can be reduced to various existing first-order methods. The unified convergence analysis reveals that the slow convergence of the steepest descent method is primarily attributed … Read more

Clique Probing For Mixed-Integer-Programs

Probing is an important presolving technique in mixed-integer programming solvers. It selects binary variables, tentatively fixes them to 0 and 1, and performs propagation to deduce additional variable fixings, bound tightenings, substitutions, and implications. In this work, we propose clique probing instead of probing on individual variables, we select cliques, a set of binary variables … Read more

Global Optimization for Combinatorial Geometry Problems Revisited in the Era of LLMs

Recent progress in LLM-driven algorithm discovery, exemplified by DeepMind’s AlphaEvolve, has produced new best-known solutions for a range of hard geometric and combinatorial problems. This raises a natural question: to what extent can modern off-the-shelf global optimization solvers match such results when the problems are formulated directly as nonlinear optimization problems (NLPs)? We revisit a … Read more

A Majorization-Minimization approach for multiclass classification in a big data scenario

This work presents a novel optimization approach for training linear classifiers in multiclass classification tasks, when focusing on a regularized and smooth Weston-Watkins support vector machine (SVM) model. We propose a Majorization-Minimization (MM) algorithm to solve the resulting, Lipschitz-differentiable, optimization problem. To enhance scalability of the algorithm when tackling large datasets, we introduce an incremental … Read more

The Maximum Clique Problem under Adversarial Uncertainty: a min-max approach

We analyze the problem of identifying large cliques in graphs that are affected by adversarial uncertainty. More specifically, we consider a new formulation, namely the adversarial maximum clique problem, which extends the classical maximum-clique problem to graphs with edges strategically perturbed by an adversary. The proposed mathematical model is thus formulated as a two-player zero-sum … Read more