Related papers: Drift Analysis and Evolutionary Algorithms Revisit…
The frame algorithm uses a simple recursive formula to approximate an unknown vector from its frame coefficients. This note introduces an adaptive version of the frame algorithm that maximizes the error reduction between steps in terms of…
We combine two popular optimization approaches to derive learning algorithms for generative models: variational optimization and evolutionary algorithms. The combination is realized for generative models with discrete latents by using…
This paper considers the efficient minimization of the infinite time average of a stationary ergodic process in the space of a handful of design parameters which affect it. Problems of this class, derived from physical or numerical…
We conduct a first fundamental analysis of the working principles of binary differential evolution (BDE), an optimization heuristic for binary decision variables that was derived by Gong and Tuson (2007) from the very successful classic…
We study the problem of causal structure learning when the experimenter is limited to perform at most $k$ non-adaptive experiments of size $1$. We formulate the problem of finding the best intervention target set as an optimization problem,…
We propose a new way to self-adjust the mutation rate in population-based evolutionary algorithms in discrete search spaces. Roughly speaking, it consists of creating half the offspring with a mutation rate that is twice the current…
Drift theory is an intuitive tool for reasoning about random processes: It allows turning expected stepwise changes into expected first-hitting times. While drift theory is used extensively by the community studying randomized search…
We study the properties of a simple greedy algorithm for the generation of data-adapted anisotropic triangulations. Given a function f, the algorithm produces nested triangulations and corresponding piecewise polynomial approximations of f.…
The aim of global optimization is to find the global optimum of arbitrary classes of functions, possibly highly multimodal ones. In this paper we focus on the subproblem of global optimization for differentiable functions and we propose an…
Online learning algorithms, widely used to power search and content optimization on the web, must balance exploration and exploitation, potentially sacrificing the experience of current users in order to gain information that will lead to…
The lack of diversity in a genetic algorithm's population may lead to a bad performance of the genetic operators since there is not an equilibrium between exploration and exploitation. In those cases, genetic algorithms present a fast and…
In this paper we propose a crossover operator for evolutionary algorithms with real values that is based on the statistical theory of population distributions. The operator is based on the theoretical distribution of the values of the genes…
We introduce and study the problem of dueling optimization with a monotone adversary, which is a generalization of (noiseless) dueling convex optimization. The goal is to design an online algorithm to find a minimizer $\mathbf{x}^{*}$ for a…
Stochastic Boolean Function Evaluation is the problem of determining the value of a given Boolean function f on an unknown input x, when each bit of x_i of x can only be determined by paying an associated cost c_i. The assumption is that x…
Chance constrained optimization problems allow to model problems where constraints involving stochastic components should only be violated with a small probability. Evolutionary algorithms have been applied to this scenario and shown to…
Recent works have shown that gradient-update alignment is a powerful signal for modulating optimizer updates, often leading to faster training. We promote this update-wise heuristic as a mathematically grounded principle for selecting and…
In recent decades, cold atom experiments have become increasingly complex. While computers control most parameters, optimization is mostly done manually. This is a time-consuming task for a high-dimensional parameter space with unknown…
Although quantum control typically relies on greedy (local) optimization, traps (irregular critical points) in the control landscape can make optimization hard by foiling local search strategies. We demonstrate the failure of greedy…
Several sparsity-constrained algorithms such as Orthogonal Matching Pursuit or the Frank-Wolfe algorithm with sparsity constraints work by iteratively selecting a novel atom to add to the current non-zero set of variables. This selection…
In this paper we consider the binary transfer learning problem, focusing on how to select and combine sources from a large pool to yield a good performance on a target task. Constraining our scenario to real world, we do not assume the…