Multilevel Optimization Modeling for Risk-Averse Stochastic Programming

Coherent risk measures have become a popular tool for incorporating risk aversion into stochastic optimization models. For dynamic models in which uncertainty is resolved at more than one stage, however, using coherent risk measures within a standard single-level optimization framework becomes problematic. To avoid severe time-consistency difficulties, the current state of the art is to … Read more

A tight iteration-complexity upper bound for the MTY predictor-corrector algorithm via redundant Klee-Minty cubes

It is an open question whether there is an interior-point algorithm for linear optimization problems with a lower iteration-complexity than the classical bound $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{n} \log(\frac{\mu_1}{\mu_0}))$. This paper provides a negative answer to that question for a variant of the Mizuno-Todd-Ye predictor-corrector algorithm. In fact, we prove that for any $\epsilon >0$, there is a redundant … Read more

Mixed-integer Quadratic Programming is in NP

Mixed-integer quadratic programming (MIQP) is the problem of optimizing a quadratic function over points in a polyhedral set where some of the components are restricted to be integral. In this paper, we prove that the decision version of mixed-integer quadratic programming is in NP, thereby showing that it is NP-complete. This is established by showing … Read more

On the shortest path game

In this work we address a game theoretic variant of the shortest path problem, in which two decision makers (agents/players) move together along the edges of a graph from a given starting vertex to a given destination. The two players take turns in deciding in each vertex which edge to traverse next. The decider in … Read more

Gradient Sliding for Composite Optimization

We consider in this paper a class of composite optimization problems whose objective function is given by the summation of a general smooth and nonsmooth component, together with a relatively simple nonsmooth term. We present a new class of first-order methods, namely the gradient sliding algorithms, which can skip the computation of the gradient for … Read more

On the Complexity of the Traveling Umpire Problem

The traveling umpire problem (TUP) consists of determining which games will be handled by each one of several umpire crews during a double round-robin tournament. The objective is to minimize the total distance traveled by the umpires, while respecting constraints that include visiting every team at home, and not seeing a team or venue too … Read more

An accelerated HPE-type algorithm for a class of composite convex-concave saddle-point problems

This article proposes a new algorithm for solving a class of composite convex-concave saddle-point problems. The new algorithm is a special instance of the hybrid proximal extragradient framework in which a Nesterov’s accelerated variant is used to approximately solve the prox subproblems. One of the advantages of the new method is that it works for … Read more

Intermediate gradient methods for smooth convex problems with inexact oracle

Between the robust but slow (primal or dual) gradient methods and the fast but sensitive to errors fast gradient methods, our goal in this paper is to develop first-order methods for smooth convex problems with intermediate speed and intermediate sensitivity to errors. We develop a general family of first-order methods, the Intermediate Gradient Method (IGM), … Read more

First-order methods with inexact oracle: the strongly convex case

The goal of this paper is to study the effect of inexact first-order information on the first-order methods designed for smooth strongly convex optimization problems. We introduce the notion of (delta,L,mu)-oracle, that can be seen as an extension of the inexact (delta,L)-oracle previously introduced, taking into account strong convexity. We consider different examples of (delta,L,mu)-oracle: … Read more

A Family of Subgradient-Based Methods for Convex Optimization Problems in a Unifying Framework

We propose a new family of subgradient- and gradient-based methods which converges with optimal complexity for convex optimization problems whose feasible region is simple enough. This includes cases where the objective function is non-smooth, smooth, have composite/saddle structure, or are given by an inexact oracle model. We unified the way of constructing the subproblems which … Read more