Related papers: Best-First and Depth-First Minimax Search in Pract…
This work presents the convergence rate analysis of stochastic variants of the broad class of direct-search methods of directional type. It introduces an algorithm designed to optimize differentiable objective functions $f$ whose values can…
One-shot neural architecture search (NAS) methods significantly reduce the search cost by considering the whole search space as one network, which only needs to be trained once. However, current methods select each operation independently…
In this paper, we introduce a discrete variant of the meta-learning framework. Meta-learning aims at exploiting prior experience and data to improve performance on future tasks. By now, there exist numerous formulations for meta-learning in…
Knuth [12, Page 417] states that "the (program of the) Fibonaccian search technique looks very mysterious at first glance" and that "it seems to work by magic". In this work, we show that there is even more magic in Fibonaccian (or else…
This paper addresses the problem of optimal control using search trees. We start by considering multi-armed bandit problems with continuous action spaces and propose LD-HOO, a limited depth variant of the hierarchical optimistic…
Tackling simulation optimization problems with non-convex objective functions remains a fundamental challenge in operations research. In this paper, we propose a class of random search algorithms, called Regular Tree Search, which…
Let $f:2^{E} \rightarrow \mathbb{Z}_+$ be a submodular function on a ground set $E = [n]$, and let $P(f)$ denote its extended polymatroid. Given a direction $d \in \mathbb{Z}^n$ with at least one positive entry, the line search problem is…
Monte-Carlo tree search (MCTS) is an effective anytime algorithm with a vast amount of applications. It strategically allocates computational resources to focus on promising segments of the search tree, making it a very attractive search…
We consider linear stochastic bandits where the set of actions is an ellipsoid. We provide the first known minimax optimal algorithm for this problem. We first derive a novel information-theoretic lower bound on the regret of any algorithm,…
Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) has been proposed as a transformative approach to join-order optimization in database query processing, with recent frameworks such as AlphaJoin and HyperQO claiming to outperform traditional methods. However,…
This paper introduces a new storage-optimal first-order method (FOM), CertSDP, for solving a special class of semidefinite programs (SDPs) to high accuracy. The class of SDPs that we consider, the exact QMP-like SDPs, is characterized by…
We initiate the study of tree structures in the context of scenario-based robust optimization. Specifically, we study Binary Search Trees (BSTs) and Huffman coding, two fundamental techniques for efficiently managing and encoding data based…
We present a study of several generic tree search techniques applied to the Sequential Ordering Problem. This study enables us to propose a simple and competitive tree search algorithm. It consists of an iterative Beam Search algorithm that…
A large number of computational and scientific methods commonly require decomposing a sparse matrix into triangular factors as LU decomposition. A common problem faced during this decomposition is that even though the given matrix may be…
Depth first search (DFS) tree is one of the most well-known data structures for designing efficient graph algorithms. Given an undirected graph $G=(V,E)$ with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges, the textbook algorithm takes $O(n+m)$ time to…
Derivatives are an important tool for single-objective optimization. In fact, it is commonly accepted that derivative-based methods present a better performance than derivative-free optimization approaches. In this work, we will show that…
Neural sequence models are widely used to model time-series data. Equally ubiquitous is the usage of beam search (BS) as an approximate inference algorithm to decode output sequences from these models. BS explores the search space in a…
We develop a first-order (pseudo-)gradient approach for optimizing functions over the stationary distribution of discrete-time Markov chains (DTMC). We give insights into why solving this optimization problem is challenging and show how…
The key challenge in neural architecture search (NAS) is designing how to explore wisely in the huge search space. We propose a new NAS method called TNAS (NAS with trees), which improves search efficiency by exploring only a small number…
Many recently proposed methods for Neural Architecture Search (NAS) can be formulated as bilevel optimization. For efficient implementation, its solution requires approximations of second-order methods. In this paper, we demonstrate that…