Related papers: Further Results on an Abstract Model for Branching…
The selection of branching variables is a key component of branch-and-bound algorithms for solving Mixed-Integer Programming (MIP) problems since the quality of the selection procedure is likely to have a significant effect on the size of…
Branch and Bound (B&B) is the exact tree search method typically used to solve Mixed-Integer Linear Programming problems (MILPs). Learning branching policies for MILP has become an active research area, with most works proposing to imitate…
Mixed-integer programming (MIP) provides a powerful framework for optimization problems, with Branch-and-Cut (B&C) being the predominant algorithm in state-of-the-art solvers. The efficiency of B&C critically depends on heuristic policies…
Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) solvers rely on an array of sophisticated heuristics developed with decades of research to solve large-scale MIP instances encountered in practice. Machine learning offers to automatically construct better…
Most state-of-the-art branch-and-bound solvers for mixed-integer linear programming rely on limited-precision floating-point arithmetic and use numerical tolerances when reasoning about feasibility and optimality during their search. While…
Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) is a powerful framework used to address a wide range of NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems, often solved by Branch and Bound (B&B). A key factor influencing the performance of B&B solvers is…
In this paper, we surveyed the existing literature studying different approaches and algorithms for the four critical components in the general branch and bound (B&B) algorithm, namely, branching variable selection, node selection, node…
Strong Branching (SB) is a cornerstone of all modern branching rules used in the Branch-and-Bound (BnB) algorithm, which is at the center of Mixed-Integer Programming solvers. In its full form, SB evaluates all variables to branch on and…
Global optimization of decision trees is a long-standing challenge in combinatorial optimization, yet such models play an important role in interpretable machine learning. Although the problem has been investigated for several decades, only…
In line with the growing trend of using machine learning to help solve combinatorial optimisation problems, one promising idea is to improve node selection within a mixed integer programming (MIP) branch-and-bound tree by using a learned…
For mixed-integer programs (MIPs), strong branching is a highly effective variable selection method to reduce the number of nodes in the branch-and-bound algorithm. Extending it to nonlinear problems is conceptually simple but practically…
Deriving a good variable selection strategy in branch-and-bound is essential for the efficiency of modern mixed-integer programming (MIP) solvers. With MIP branching data collected during the previous solution process, learning to branch…
An essential component in modern solvers for mixed-integer (linear) programs (MIPs) is the separation of additional inequalities (cutting planes) to tighten the linear programming relaxation. Various algorithmic decisions are necessary when…
An important problem in optimization is the construction of mixed-integer programming (MIP) formulations of disjunctive constraints that are both strong and small. Motivated by lower bounds on the number of integer variables that are…
Branch-and-bound is the workhorse of all state-of-the-art mixed integer linear programming (MILP) solvers. These implementations of branch-and-bound typically use variable branching, that is, the child nodes are obtained by fixing some…
Mixed-integer model predictive control (MI-MPC) requires the solution of a mixed-integer quadratic program (MIQP) at each sampling instant under strict timing constraints, where part of the state and control variables can only assume a…
Cutting planes and branching are two of the most important algorithms for solving mixed-integer linear programs. For both algorithms, disjunctions play an important role, being used both as branching candidates and as the foundation for…
Machine learning is increasingly used to improve decisions within branch-and-bound algorithms for mixed-integer programming. Many existing approaches rely on deep learning, which often requires very large training datasets and substantial…
State-of-the-art branch and bound algorithms for mixed integer programming make use of special methods for making branching decisions. Strategies that have gained prominence include modern variants of so-called strong branching (Applegate,…
Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) lies at the core of many real-world combinatorial optimization (CO) problems, traditionally solved by branch-and-bound (B&B). A key driver influencing B&B solvers efficiency is the variable selection…