Related papers: New merit functions for multiobjective optimizatio…
Predicting the value of a function $f$ at a new point given its values at old points is an ubiquitous scientific endeavor, somewhat less developed when $f$ produces multiple values that depend on one another, e.g. when it outputs…
Error bounds, which refer to inequalities that bound the distance of vectors in a test set to a given set by a residual function, have proven to be extremely useful in analyzing the convergence rates of a host of iterative methods for…
We consider the problem of maximizing an unknown function over a compact and convex set using as few observations as possible. We observe that the optimization of the function essentially relies on learning the induced bipartite ranking…
In this paper, we focus on the problem of stochastic optimization where the objective function can be written as an expectation function over a closed convex set. We also consider multiple expectation constraints which restrict the domain…
This paper investigates a category of constrained fractional optimization problems that emerge in various practical applications. The objective function for this category is characterized by the ratio of a numerator and denominator, both…
Logarithmic score and information divergence appear in information theory, statistics, statistical mechanics, and portfolio theory. We demonstrate that all these topics involve some kind of optimization that leads directly to regret…
Submodular set-functions have many applications in combinatorial optimization, as they can be minimized and approximately maximized in polynomial time. A key element in many of the algorithms and analyses is the possibility of extending the…
The specification of aMarkov decision process (MDP) can be difficult. Reward function specification is especially problematic; in practice, it is often cognitively complex and time-consuming for users to precisely specify rewards. This work…
Machine learning is about forecasting. When the forecasts come with an evaluation metric the forecasts become useful. What are reasonable evaluation metrics? How do existing evaluation metrics relate? In this work, we provide a general…
We develop a rigorous framework for global non-convex optimization by reformulating the minimization problem as a discounted infinite-horizon optimal control problem. For non-convex, continuous, and possibly non-smooth objective functions…
Recently, the forward-backward and Douglas-Rachford envelope functions were proposed in the literature. The stationary points of these envelope functions have a close relationship with the solutions of the possibly nonsmooth optimization…
In this work, we study optimization specified only through a comparison oracle: given two points, it reports which one is preferred. We call it function-free optimization because we do not assume access to, nor the existence of, a canonical…
The Sinc approximation has shown high efficiency for numerical methods in many fields. Conformal maps play an important role in the success, i.e., appropriate conformal map must be employed to elicit high performance of the Sinc…
This paper presents a novel stochastic gradient descent algorithm for constrained optimization. The proposed algorithm randomly samples constraints and components of the finite sum objective function and relies on a relaxed logarithmic…
We consider approximation or recovery of functions based on a finite number of function evaluations. This is a well-studied problem in optimal recovery, machine learning, and numerical analysis in general, but many fundamental insights were…
The min-max optimization problem, also known as the saddle point problem, is a classical optimization problem which is also studied in the context of zero-sum games. Given a class of objective functions, the goal is to find a value for the…
Mode {also called MAP} estimation, mean estimation and median estimation are examined here to determine when they can be safely used to derive {posterior) cost minimizing estimates. (These are all Bayes procedures, using the mode. mean. or…
It is common to see a handful of reviewers reject a highly novel paper, because they view, say, extensive experiments as far more important than novelty, whereas the community as a whole would have embraced the paper. More generally, the…
Current state-of-the-art multi-objective optimization solvers, by computing gradients of all $m$ objective functions per iteration, produce after $k$ iterations a measure of proximity to critical conditions that is upper-bounded by…
The objective of this paper is to provide a convergent numerical approximation of the Pareto optimal set for finite-horizon multiobjective optimal control problems for which the objective space is not necessarily convex. Our approach is…