Related papers: An Atypical Survey of Typical-Case Heuristic Algor…
Minimizing the rank of a matrix subject to constraints is a challenging problem that arises in many applications in control theory, machine learning, and discrete geometry. This class of optimization problems, known as rank minimization, is…
In the last couple of decades, the world has seen several stunning instances of quantum algorithms that provably outperform the best classical algorithms. For most problems, however, it is currently unknown whether quantum algorithms can…
Gradient-based solvers risk convergence to local optima, leading to incorrect researcher inference. Heuristic-based algorithms are able to ``break free" of these local optima to eventually converge to the true global optimum. However, given…
In the photonic design problem, a scientist or engineer chooses the physical parameters of a device to best match some desired device behavior. Many instances of the photonic design problem can be naturally stated as a mathematical…
Selection HHs are randomised search methodologies which choose and execute heuristics during the optimisation process from a set of low-level heuristics. A machine learning mechanism is generally used to decide which low-level heuristic…
Although heuristic search is one of the most successful approaches to classical planning, this planning paradigm does not apply straightforwardly to Generalized Planning (GP). This paper adapts the planning as heuristic search paradigm to…
Algorithms for computing equilibria, optima, and fixed points in nonconvex problems often depend sensitively on practitioner-chosen initial conditions. When uniqueness of a solution is of interest, a common heuristic is to run such…
We survey recent developments in the study of probabilistic complexity classes. While the evidence seems to support the conjecture that probabilism can be deterministically simulated with relatively low overhead, i.e., that $P=BPP$, it also…
Heuristics are a central component of deterministic planning, particularly in domain-independent settings where general applicability is prioritized over task-specific tuning. This work revisits that paradigm in light of recent advances in…
Given a hierarchical plan (or schedule) with uncertain task times, we propose a deterministic polynomial (time and memory) algorithm for estimating the probability that its meets a deadline, or, alternately, that its {\em makespan} is less…
In metabolomics, small molecules are structurally elucidated using tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS); this resulted in the computational Maximum Colorful Subtree problem, which is NP-hard. Unfortunately, data from a single metabolite…
Heuristic search is a powerful approach that has successfully been applied to a broad class of planning problems, including classical planning, multi-objective planning, and probabilistic planning modelled as a stochastic shortest path…
This paper presents a comparative analysis of Sudoku-solving strategies, focusing on recursive backtracking and a heuristic-based constraint propagation method. Using a dataset of 500 puzzles across five difficulty levels (Beginner to…
We describe how to convert the heuristic search algorithm A* into an anytime algorithm that finds a sequence of improved solutions and eventually converges to an optimal solution. The approach we adopt uses weighted heuristic search to find…
A machine learning system can score well on a given test set by relying on heuristics that are effective for frequent example types but break down in more challenging cases. We study this issue within natural language inference (NLI), the…
We introduce deterministic perturbation schemes for the recently proposed random directions stochastic approximation (RDSA) [17], and propose new first-order and second-order algorithms. In the latter case, these are the first second-order…
Metaheuristics have gained great success in academia and practice because their search logic can be applied to any problem with available solution representation, solution quality evaluation, and certain notions of locality. Manually…
Several different ways exist for approaching hard optimization problems. Mathematical programming techniques, including (integer) linear programming-based methods and metaheuristic approaches, are two highly successful streams for…
The multidimensional knapsack problem (MKP) is an NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem whose solution is determining a subset of maximum total profit items that do not violate capacity constraints. Due to its hardness, large-scale MKP…
Heuristic functions are central to the performance of search algorithms such as A-star, where admissibility - the property of never overestimating the true shortest-path cost - guarantees solution optimality. Recent deep learning approaches…