Related papers: Stochastic Optimization with Parametric Cost Funct…
Topology optimization under uncertainty (TOuU) often defines objectives and constraints by statistical moments of geometric and physical quantities of interest. Most traditional TOuU methods use gradient-based optimization algorithms and…
Aerodynamic optimization is ubiquitous in the design of most engineering systems interacting with fluids. A common approach is to optimize a performance function defined by a choice of an aerodynamic model, e.g., turbulence RANS model, and…
Randomized rounding is a technique that was originally used to approximate hard offline discrete optimization problems from a mathematical programming relaxation. Since then it has also been used to approximately solve sequential stochastic…
Stochastic dual dynamic programming is a cutting plane type algorithm for multi-stage stochastic optimization originated about 30 years ago. In spite of its popularity in practice, there does not exist any analysis on the convergence rates…
A step-search sequential quadratic programming method is proposed for solving nonlinear equality constrained stochastic optimization problems. It is assumed that constraint function values and derivatives are available, but only stochastic…
In applications of imprecise probability, analysts must compute lower (or upper) expectations, defined as the infimum of an expectation over a set of parameter values. Monte Carlo methods consistently approximate expectations at fixed…
In this paper, we propose a class of penalty methods with stochastic approximation for solving stochastic nonlinear programming problems. We assume that only noisy gradients or function values of the objective function are available via…
Real-world experiments involve batched & delayed feedback, non-stationarity, multiple objectives & constraints, and (often some) personalization. Tailoring adaptive methods to address these challenges on a per-problem basis is infeasible,…
This paper considers stochastic optimization problems for a large class of objective functions, including convex and continuous submodular. Stochastic proximal gradient methods have been widely used to solve such problems; however, their…
We investigate planning in time-critical domains represented as Markov Decision Processes, showing that search based techniques can be a very powerful method for finding close to optimal plans. To reduce the computational cost of planning…
The convex analytic method has proved to be a very versatile method for the study of infinite horizon average cost optimal stochastic control problems. In this paper, we revisit the convex analytic method and make three primary…
Code super-optimization is the task of transforming any given program to a more efficient version while preserving its input-output behaviour. In some sense, it is similar to the paraphrase problem from natural language processing where the…
The robust multi-product pricing problem is to determine the prices of a collection of products so as to maximize the worst-case revenue, where the worst case is taken over an uncertainty set of demand models that the firm expects could be…
Stochastic dual dynamic programming (SDDP) is a state-of-the-art method for solving multi-stage stochastic optimization, widely used for modeling real-world process optimization tasks. Unfortunately, SDDP has a worst-case complexity that…
In this work we focus on efficient heuristics for solving a class of stochastic planning problems that arise in a variety of business, investment, and industrial applications. The problem is best described in terms of future buy and sell…
In this paper, we consider the problem of stochastic optimization, where the objective function is in terms of the expectation of a (possibly non-convex) cost function that is parametrized by a random variable. While the convergence speed…
In both industrial and service domains, a central benefit of the use of robots is their ability to quickly and reliably execute repetitive tasks. However, even relatively simple peg-in-hole tasks are typically subject to stochastic…
Heuristic algorithms have shown a good ability to solve a variety of optimization problems. Stockpile blending problem as an important component of the mine scheduling problem is an optimization problem with continuous search space…
In scheduling problems, deterministic task durations are often assumed. This usually does not capture reality and may lead to schedules that are not robust to (small) changes to these task lengths. The use of stochastic task durations…
This paper deals with shape optimization for elastic materials under stochastic loads. It transfers the paradigm of stochastic dominance, which allows for flexible risk aversion via comparison with benchmark random variables, from…