Related papers: Optimal approximation for unconstrained non-submod…
Robust Optimization is becoming increasingly important in machine learning applications. This paper studies the problem of robust submodular minimization subject to combinatorial constraints. Constrained Submodular Minimization arises in…
Submodular maximization under various constraints is a fundamental problem studied continuously, in both computer science and operations research, since the late $1970$'s. A central technique in this field is to approximately optimize the…
Motivated by a wide range of applications in data mining and machine learning, we consider the problem of maximizing a submodular function subject to supermodular cost constraints. In contrast to the well-understood setting of cardinality…
Many problems of theoretical and practical interest involve finding an optimum over a family of convex functions. For instance, finding the projection on the convex functions in $H^k(\Omega)$, and optimizing functionals arising from some…
We present combinatorial and parallelizable algorithms for maximization of a submodular function, not necessarily monotone, with respect to a size constraint. We improve the best approximation factor achieved by an algorithm that has…
Submodular functions are an important class of functions in combinatorial optimization which satisfy the natural properties of decreasing marginal costs. The study of these functions has led to strong structural properties with applications…
Approximations of functions with finite data often do not respect certain "structural" properties of the functions. For example, if a given function is non-negative, a polynomial approximation of the function is not necessarily also…
This paper proposes several novel optimization algorithms for minimizing a nonlinear objective function. The algorithms are enlightened by the optimal state trajectory of an optimal control problem closely related to the minimized objective…
In this work, we consider robust submodular maximization with matroid constraints. We give an efficient bi-criteria approximation algorithm that outputs a small family of feasible sets whose union has (nearly) optimal objective value. This…
We introduce the problem of maximizing approximately $k$-submodular functions subject to size constraints. In this problem, one seeks to select $k$-disjoint subsets of a ground set with bounded total size or individual sizes, and maximum…
We study planning with submodular objective functions, where instead of maximizing the cumulative reward, the goal is to maximize the objective value induced by a submodular function. Our framework subsumes standard planning and submodular…
The submodular function maximization is an attractive optimization model that appears in many real applications. Although a variety of greedy algorithms quickly find good feasible solutions for many instances while guaranteeing…
We consider minimization problems with bisubmodular objective functions. We propose valid inequalities, namely the poly-bimatroid inequalities, and provide a complete linear description of the convex hull of the epigraph of a bisubmodular…
The problem of minimizing convex functionals of probability distributions is solved under the assumption that the density of every distribution is bounded from above and below. A system of sufficient and necessary first-order optimality…
This paper studies simple bilevel problems, where a convex upper-level function is minimized over the optimal solutions of a convex lower-level problem. We first show the fundamental difficulty of simple bilevel problems, that the…
Submodularity is one of the most important properties in combinatorial optimization, and $k$-submodularity is a generalization of submodularity. Maximization of a $k$-submodular function requires an exponential number of value oracle…
It has been well established that first order optimization methods can converge to the maximal objective value of concave functions and provide constant factor approximation guarantees for (non-convex/non-concave) continuous submodular…
In this paper, we study the problem of maximizing continuous submodular functions that naturally arise in many learning applications such as those involving utility functions in active learning and sensing, matrix approximations and network…
We present a new algorithm for solving optimization problems with objective functions that are the sum of a smooth function and a (potentially) nonsmooth regularization function, and nonlinear equality constraints. The algorithm may be…
We consider the problem of maximizing a monotone submodular function subject to a knapsack constraint. Our main contribution is an algorithm that achieves a nearly-optimal, $1 - 1/e - \epsilon$ approximation, using…