Related papers: Generalization Guarantees for Learning Branch-and-…
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…
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…
A key ingredient in branch and bound (B&B) solvers for mixed-integer programming (MIP) is the selection of branching variables since poor or arbitrary selection can affect the size of the resulting search trees by orders of magnitude. A…
Machine learning is increasingly used to guide branch-and-cut (B&C) for mixed-integer linear programming by learning score-based policies for selecting branching variables and cutting planes. Many approaches train on local signals from…
Cutting plane methods play a significant role in modern solvers for tackling mixed-integer programming (MIP) problems. Proper selection of cuts would remove infeasible solutions in the early stage, thus largely reducing the computational…
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…
In mixed-integer programming (MIP) solvers, cutting planes are essential for Branch-and-Cut (B&C) algorithms as they reduce the search space and accelerate the solving process. Traditional methods rely on hard-coded heuristics for cut plane…
Branch-and-cut is the most widely used algorithm for solving integer programs, employed by commercial solvers like CPLEX and Gurobi. Branch-and-cut has a wide variety of tunable parameters that have a huge impact on the size of the search…
This paper proposes a novel primal heuristic for Mixed Integer Programs, by employing machine learning techniques. Mixed Integer Programming is a general technique for formulating combinatorial optimization problems. Inside a solver, primal…
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…
We propose a Branch-and-Cut (B&C) method for solving general MAP-MRF inference problems. The core of our method is a very efficient bounding procedure, which combines scalable semidefinite programming (SDP) and a cutting-plane method for…
The incorporation of cutting planes within the branch-and-bound algorithm, known as branch-and-cut, forms the backbone of modern integer programming solvers. These solvers are the foremost method for solving discrete optimization problems…
We survey recent work on machine learning (ML) techniques for selecting cutting planes (or cuts) in mixed-integer linear programming (MILP). Despite the availability of various classes of cuts, the task of choosing a set of cuts to add to…
Piecewise regression is a versatile approach used in various disciplines to approximate complex functions from limited, potentially noisy data points. In control, piecewise regression is, e.g., used to approximate the optimal control law of…
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…
In this paper, we propose a Bi-layer Predictionbased Reduction Branch (BP-RB) framework to speed up the process of finding a high-quality feasible solution for Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) problems. A graph convolutional network (GCN) is…
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…
Cutting planes (cuts) are crucial for solving Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) problems. Advanced MILP solvers typically rely on manually designed heuristic algorithms for cut selection, which require much expert experience 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…
Designing faster algorithms for solving Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) problems is highly desired across numerous practical domains, as a vast array of complex real-world challenges can be effectively modeled as MILP formulations.…