Value-at-Risk optimization using the difference of convex algorithm

Value-at-Risk (VaR) is an integral part of contemporary financial regulations. Therefore, the measurement of VaR and the design of VaR optimal portfolios are highly relevant problems for financial institutions. This paper treats a VaR constrained Markowitz style portfolio selection problem when the distribution of returns of the considered assets are given in the form of … Read more

A Coordinate Gradient Descent Method for L_1-regularized Convex Minimization

In applications such as signal processing and statistics, many problems involve finding sparse solutions to under-determined linear systems of equations. These problems can be formulated as a structured nonsmooth optimization problems, i.e., the problem of minimizing L_1-regularized linear least squares problems. In this paper, we propose a block coordinate gradient descent method (abbreviated as CGD) … Read more

General algorithmic frameworks for online problems

We study general algorithmic frameworks for online learning tasks. These include binary classification, regression, multiclass problems and cost-sensitive multiclass classification. The theorems that we present give loss bounds on the behavior of our algorithms that depend on general conditions on the iterative step sizes. CitationInternational Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol. 46 (2008), pp. … Read more

Iterative Estimation Maximization for Stochastic Linear Programs with Conditional Value-at-Risk Constraints

We present a new algorithm, Iterative Estimation Maximization (IEM), for stochastic linear programs with Conditional Value-at-Risk constraints. IEM iteratively constructs a sequence of compact-sized linear optimization problems, and solves them sequentially to find the optimal solution. The problem size IEM solves in each iteration is unaffected by the size of random samples, which makes it … Read more

On-line Service Scheduling

This paper is concerned with a scheduling problem that occurs in service systems, where customers are classified as `ordinary’ and `special’. Ordinary customers can be served on any service facility, while special customers can be served only on the flexible service facilities. Customers arrive dynamically over time and their needs become known upon arrival. We … Read more

On the behavior of subgradient projections methods for convex feasibility problems in Euclidean spaces

We study some methods of subgradient projections for solving a convex feasibility problem with general (not necessarily hyperplanes or half-spaces) convex sets in the inconsistent case and propose a strategy that controls the relaxation parameters in a specific self-adapting manner. This strategy leaves enough user-flexibility but gives a mathematical guarantee for the algorithm’s behavior in … Read more

Exact and heuristic solutions of the global supply chain problem with transfer pricing

We examine the example of a multinational corporation that attempts to maximize its global after tax profits by determining the flow of goods, the transfer prices, and the transportation cost allocation between each of its subsidiaries. Vidal and Goetschalckx (2001) proposed a bilinear model of this problem and solved it by an Alternate heuristic. We … Read more

Passenger Name Record Data Mining Based Cancellation Forecasting for Revenue Management

Revenue management (RM) enhances the revenues of a company by means of demand-management decisions. An RM system must take into account the possibility that a booking may be canceled, or that a booked customer may fail to show up at the time of service (no-show). We review the Passenger Name Record data mining based cancellation … Read more

Copositive programming motivated bounds on the stability and the chromatic numbers

The Lovász theta number of a graph G can be viewed as a semidefinite programming relaxation of the stability number of G. It has recently been shown that a copositive strengthening of this semidefinite program in fact equals the stability number of G. We introduce a related strengthening of the Lovász theta number toward the … Read more