The condition of a function relative to a polytope

The condition number of a smooth convex function, namely the ratio of its smoothness to strong convexity constants, is closely tied to fundamental properties of the function. In particular, the condition number of a quadratic convex function is precisely the square of the diameter-to-width ratio of a canonical ellipsoid associated to the function. Furthermore, the … Read more

On the Grassmann condition number

We give new insight into the Grassmann condition of the conic feasibility problem \[ x \in L \cap K \setminus\{0\}. \] Here $K\subseteq V$ is a regular convex cone and $L\subseteq V$ is a linear subspace of the finite dimensional Euclidean vector space $V$. The Grassmann condition of this problem is the reciprocal of the … Read more

Warm start strategies in interior-point methods for linear programming

We study the situation in which, having solved a linear program with an interior-point method, we are presented with a new problem instance whose data is slightly perturbed from the original. We describe strategies for recovering a “warm-start” point for the perturbed problem instance from the iterates of the original problem instance. We obtain worst-case … Read more