Related papers: Efficient semidefinite bounds for multi-label disc…
Exact solution of hard combinatorial optimization problems often relies on strong convex relaxations, but solving these relaxations repeatedly inside a branch-and-bound algorithm can be prohibitively expensive. Hence, we consider this…
Maximum A posteriori Probability (MAP) inference in graphical models amounts to solving a graph-structured combinatorial optimization problem. Popular inference algorithms such as belief propagation (BP) and generalized belief propagation…
Semidefinite programs (SDPs) can be solved in polynomial time by interior point methods. However, when the dimension of the problem gets large, interior point methods become impractical in terms of both computational time and memory…
Semidefinite programs (SDPs) can be solved in polynomial time by interior point methods, but scalability can be an issue. To address this shortcoming, over a decade ago, Burer and Monteiro proposed to solve SDPs with few equality…
We consider the problem of maximizing submodular functions; while this problem is known to be NP-hard, several numerically efficient local search techniques with approximation guarantees are available. In this paper, we propose a novel…
Semidefinite programs (SDPs) are powerful theoretical tools that have been studied for over two decades, but their practical use remains limited due to computational difficulties in solving large-scale, realistic-sized problems. In this…
This paper introduces a general multi-class approach to weakly supervised classification. Inferring the labels and learning the parameters of the model is usually done jointly through a block-coordinate descent algorithm such as…
Consider a semidefinite program (SDP) involving an $n\times n$ positive semidefinite matrix $X$. The Burer-Monteiro method uses the substitution $X=Y Y^T$ to obtain a nonconvex optimization problem in terms of an $n\times p$ matrix $Y$.…
We study a model of constraint satisfaction problems geared towards instances with few variables but with domain of unbounded size (udCSP). Our model is inspired by recent work on FPT algorithms for MinCSP where frequently both upper and…
We introduce a method for proving lower bounds on the efficacy of semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations for combinatorial problems. In particular, we show that the cut, TSP, and stable set polytopes on $n$-vertex graphs are not the…
The input in the Minimum-Cost Constraint Satisfaction Problem (MinCSP) over the Point Algebra contains a set of variables, a collection of constraints of the form $x < y$, $x = y$, $x \leq y$ and $x \neq y$, and a budget $k$. The goal is to…
We present experimental work on a primal-dual framework simultaneously approximating maximum cut and weighted fractional cut-covering instances. In this primal-dual framework, we solve a semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation to either…
Semidefinite programming (SDP) is widely acknowledged as one of the most effective methods for deriving the tightest lower bounds of the optimal power flow (OPF) problems. In this paper, an enhanced semidefinite relaxation model that…
Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) problems are prevalent in various applications and are known to be NP-hard. The seminal work of Goemans and Williamson introduced a semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation for such…
In this paper we study the approximability of (Finite-)Valued Constraint Satisfaction Problems (VCSPs) with a fixed finite constraint language {\Gamma} consisting of finitary functions on a fixed finite domain. An instance of VCSP is given…
For a large class of optimization problems, namely those that can be expressed as finite-valued constraint satisfaction problems (VCSPs), we establish a dichotomy on the number of levels of the Lasserre hierarchy of semi-definite programs…
Efficient exact algorithms for Discrete Optimization (DO) rely heavily on strong primal and dual bounds. Relaxed Decision Diagrams (DDs) provide a versatile mechanism for deriving such dual bounds by compactly over-approximating the…
Statistical inference problems arising within signal processing, data mining, and machine learning naturally give rise to hard combinatorial optimization problems. These problems become intractable when the dimensionality of the data is…
This paper studies the interpretability of neural network features from a Bayesian Gaussian view, where optimizing a cost is reaching a probabilistic bound; learning a model approximates a density that makes the bound tight and the cost…
The so-called Burer-Monteiro method is a well-studied technique for solving large-scale semidefinite programs (SDPs) via low-rank factorization. The main idea is to solve rank-restricted, albeit non-convex, surrogates instead of the SDP.…