Related papers: SOS lower bounds with hard constraints: think glob…
For many constraint satisfaction problems, the algorithm which chooses a random assignment achieves the best possible approximation ratio. For instance, a simple random assignment for {\sc Max-E3-Sat} allows 7/8-approximation and for every…
Raghavendra (STOC 2008) gave an elegant and surprising result: if Khot's Unique Games Conjecture (STOC 2002) is true, then for every constraint satisfaction problem (CSP), the best approximation ratio is attained by a certain simple…
In this paper, we introduce a new class of nonsmooth convex functions called SOS-convex semialgebraic functions extending the recently proposed notion of SOS-convex polynomials. This class of nonsmooth convex functions covers many common…
We prove that for every $\epsilon>0$ and predicate $P:\{0,1\}^k\rightarrow \{0,1\}$ that supports a pairwise independent distribution, there exists an instance $\mathcal{I}$ of the $\mathsf{Max}P$ constraint satisfaction problem on $n$…
Cardinality-constrained optimization (CCO) is a popular topic in sparse learning and signal recovery, yet remains challenging due to the inherent nonconvexity and discontinuity of cardinality constraints. This paper investigates the exact…
A constraint satisfaction problem (CSP), $\textsf{Max-CSP}(\mathcal{F})$, is specified by a finite set of constraints $\mathcal{F} \subseteq \{[q]^k \to \{0,1\}\}$ for positive integers $q$ and $k$. An instance of the problem on $n$…
Sensitivity measures how much the output of an algorithm changes, in terms of Hamming distance, when part of the input is modified. While approximation algorithms with low sensitivity have been developed for many problems, no sensitivity…
We consider the problem of computing the Lebesgue volume of compact basic semi-algebraic sets. In full generality, it can be approximated as closely as desired by a converging hierarchy of upper bounds obtained by applying the Moment-SOS…
The degree of a CSP instance is the maximum number of times that a variable may appear in the scope of constraints. We consider the approximate counting problem for Boolean CSPs with bounded-degree instances, for constraint languages…
We study data-driven least squares (LS) problems with semidefinite (SD) constraints and derive finite-sample guarantees on the spectrum of their optimal solutions when these constraints are relaxed. In particular, we provide a high…
In this paper, we develop and analyze sub-sampled trust-region methods for solving finite-sum optimization problems. These methods employ subsampling strategies to approximate the gradient and Hessian of the objective function,…
Sequential pattern mining (SPM) under gap constraint is a challenging task. Many efficient specialized methods have been developed but they are all suffering from a lack of genericity. The Constraint Programming (CP) approaches are not so…
Coordinate descent methods have considerable impact in global optimization because global (or, at least, almost global) minimization is affordable for low-dimensional problems. Coordinate descent methods with high-order regularized models…
The classic lower bound of Kuhn, Moscibroda and Wattenhofer [JACM 2016] states that approximate maximum matching and approximate vertex cover (among other problems) in the LOCAL model require $\Omega(\min\{\sqrt{\frac{\log n}{\log\log n}},…
We exhibit a convex polynomial optimization problem for which the diagonally-dominant sum-of-squares (DSOS) and the scaled diagonally-dominant sum-of-squares (SDSOS) hierarchies, based on linear programming and second-order conic…
We show a new way to round vector solutions of semidefinite programming (SDP) hierarchies into integral solutions, based on a connection between these hierarchies and the spectrum of the input graph. We demonstrate the utility of our method…
We investigate the polynomial-time approximability of the multistage version of Min-Sum Set Cover ($\mathrm{DSSC}$), a natural and intriguing generalization of the classical List Update problem. In $\mathrm{DSSC}$, we maintain a sequence of…
Many recent problems in signal processing and machine learning such as compressed sensing, image restoration, matrix/tensor recovery, and non-negative matrix factorization can be cast as constrained optimization. Projected gradient descent…
The moment-sum of squares hierarchy by Lasserre has become an established technique for solving polynomial optimization problems. It provides a monotonically increasing series of tight bounds, but has well-known scalability limitations. For…
Scaling Bayesian optimisation (BO) to high-dimensional search spaces is a active and open research problems particularly when no assumptions are made on function structure. The main reason is that at each iteration, BO requires to find…