Related papers: Understanding the Effect of Stochasticity in Polic…
Large sectors of the recent optimization literature focused in the last decade on the development of optimal stochastic first order schemes for constrained convex models under progressively relaxed assumptions. Stochastic proximal point is…
Machine learning algorithms in high-dimensional settings are highly susceptible to the influence of even a small fraction of structured outliers, making robust optimization techniques essential. In particular, within the…
We develop a framework for convexifying a fairly general class of optimization problems. Under additional assumptions, we analyze the suboptimality of the solution to the convexified problem relative to the original nonconvex problem and…
This paper investigates methods for estimating the optimal stochastic control policy for a Markov Decision Process with unknown transition dynamics and an unknown reward function. This form of model-free reinforcement learning comprises…
We develop a tractable and flexible approach for incorporating side information into dynamic optimization under uncertainty. The proposed framework uses predictive machine learning methods (such as $k$-nearest neighbors, kernel regression,…
We study data-driven learning of robust stochastic control for infinite-horizon systems with potentially continuous state and action spaces. In many managerial settings--supply chains, finance, manufacturing, services, and dynamic…
Policy learning utilizing observational data is pivotal across various domains, with the objective of learning the optimal treatment assignment policy while adhering to specific constraints such as fairness, budget, and simplicity. This…
Finite-difference methods are widely used for zeroth-order optimization in settings where gradient information is unavailable or expensive to compute. These procedures mimic first-order strategies by approximating gradients through function…
Policy learning in modern operations environments faces a fundamental tension between limited operational data and the large, often continuous, state and action spaces over which good decisions must be identified and deployed. We study…
Majorization-minimization algorithms consist of iteratively minimizing a majorizing surrogate of an objective function. Because of its simplicity and its wide applicability, this principle has been very popular in statistics and in signal…
In this study, we consider an optimization problem with uncertainty dependent on decision variables, which has recently attracted attention due to its importance in machine learning and pricing applications. In this problem, the gradient of…
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…
This contribution examines optimization problems that involve stochastic dominance constraints. These problems have uncountably many constraints. We develop methods to solve the optimization problem by reducing the constraints to a finite…
We propose a hybrid algorithmic strategy for complex stochastic optimization problems, which combines the use of scenario trees from multistage stochastic programming with machine learning techniques for learning a policy in the form of a…
We initiate the systematic study of decision-theoretic metrics in the design and analysis of algorithms with machine-learned predictions. We introduce approaches based on both deterministic measures such as distance-based evaluation, that…
In real-world decision making tasks, it is critical for data-driven reinforcement learning methods to be both stable and sample efficient. On-policy methods typically generate reliable policy improvement throughout training, while…
Off-policy learning is a framework for optimizing policies without deploying them, using data collected by another policy. In recommender systems, this is especially challenging due to the imbalance in logged data: some items are…
This survey explores the geometric perspective on policy optimization within the realm of feedback control systems, emphasizing the intrinsic relationship between control design and optimization. By adopting a geometric viewpoint, we aim to…
Contextual stochastic optimization is an advanced methodology to model uncertainty in the presence of contextual information during decision planning processes. Although classical methodologies focus on minimizing the expectation of a…
We develop a stochastic approximation-type algorithm to solve finite state/action, infinite-horizon, risk-aware Markov decision processes. Our algorithm has two loops. The inner loop computes the risk by solving a stochastic saddle-point…