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Related papers: Contextual Learning for Stochastic Optimization

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We study zeroth-order optimization where solutions must minimize a cost $d(s)$ while maintaining high probability under a complex generative prior $L(s)$ (e.g., a parameterized model). This reduces to sampling from a target distribution…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-06 Pranjal Awasthi , Sreenivas Gollapudi , Ravi Kumar , Kamesh Munagala

We propose a sampling-based trajectory optimization methodology for constrained problems. We extend recent works on stochastic search to deal with box control constraints,as well as nonlinear state constraints for discrete dynamical…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-11-13 George I. Boutselis , Ziyi Wang , Evangelos A. Theodorou

We study the evolution of behavioral rules in environments with multiple contexts. Agents copy rules used by better-performing peers in the same context and apply them across contexts. Multiple contexts turn discrete-time imitation dynamics…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-08 Enrique Urbano Arellano , Xinyang Wang

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-11-18 Shengbo Wang , Jason Meng , Nian Si , Jose Blanchet , Zhengyuan Zhou

We consider a simulation optimization problem for a context-dependent decision-making. A Gaussian mixture model is proposed to capture the performance clustering phenomena of context-dependent designs. Under a Bayesian framework, we develop…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-12-15 Haidong Li , Henry Lam , Yijie Peng

The main focus of this paper is radius-based (supplier) clustering in the two-stage stochastic setting with recourse, where the inherent stochasticity of the model comes in the form of a budget constraint. In addition to the standard…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-04-09 Brian Brubach , Nathaniel Grammel , David G. Harris , Aravind Srinivasan , Leonidas Tsepenekas , Anil Vullikanti

The paradigm of decision-making has been revolutionised by reinforcement learning and deep learning. Although this has led to significant progress in domains such as robotics, healthcare, and finance, the use of RL in practice is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-23 Daqian Shao

This paper considers a distributed stochastic strongly convex optimization, where agents connected over a network aim to cooperatively minimize the average of all agents' local cost functions. Due to the stochasticity of gradient estimation…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-02-17 Jinlong Lei , Peng Yi , Jie Chen , Yiguang Hong

Recently there has been a surge of interest in operations research (OR) and the machine learning (ML) community in combining prediction algorithms and optimization techniques to solve decision-making problems in the face of uncertainty.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-11 Utsav Sadana , Abhilash Chenreddy , Erick Delage , Alexandre Forel , Emma Frejinger , Thibaut Vidal

The topic of learning to solve optimization problems has received interest from both the operations research and machine learning communities. In this work, we combine techniques from both fields to address the problem of learning to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-25 Aaron Babier , Timothy C. Y. Chan , Adam Diamant , Rafid Mahmood

We study high-dimensional stochastic optimal control problems in which many agents cooperate to minimize a convex cost functional. We consider both the full-information problem, in which each agent observes the states of all other agents,…

Probability · Mathematics 2023-01-10 Joe Jackson , Daniel Lacker

We study non-smooth stochastic decentralized optimization problems over time-varying networks, where objective functions are distributed across nodes and network connections may intermittently appear or break. Specifically, we consider two…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-28 Maxim Divilkovskiy , Alexander Gasnikov

Many physical systems have underlying safety considerations that require that the policy employed ensures the satisfaction of a set of constraints. The analytical formulation usually takes the form of a Constrained Markov Decision Process…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-03 Aria HasanzadeZonuzy , Archana Bura , Dileep Kalathil , Srinivas Shakkottai

We introduce contextual stochastic bilevel optimization (CSBO) -- a stochastic bilevel optimization framework with the lower-level problem minimizing an expectation conditioned on some contextual information and the upper-level decision…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-10-31 Yifan Hu , Jie Wang , Yao Xie , Andreas Krause , Daniel Kuhn

We introduce a continuous policy-value iteration algorithm where the approximations of the value function of a stochastic control problem and the optimal control are simultaneously updated through Langevin-type dynamics. This framework…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-06-11 Qi Feng , Gu Wang

When optimizing problems with uncertain parameter values in a linear objective, decision-focused learning enables end-to-end learning of these values. We are interested in a stochastic scheduling problem, in which processing times are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-16 Kim van den Houten , David M. J. Tax , Esteban Freydell , Mathijs de Weerdt

Despite the empirical success of foundation models, we do not have a systematic characterization of the representations that these models learn. In this paper, we establish the contexture theory. It shows that a large class of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-06 Runtian Zhai , Kai Yang , Che-Ping Tsai , Burak Varici , Zico Kolter , Pradeep Ravikumar

Chance constraints are frequently used to limit the probability of constraint violations in real-world optimization problems where the constraints involve stochastic components. We study chance-constrained submodular optimization problems,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-09-27 Xiankun Yan , Anh Viet Do , Feng Shi , Xiaoyu Qin , Frank Neumann

We consider distributed multitask learning problems over a network of agents where each agent is interested in estimating its own parameter vector, also called task, and where the tasks at neighboring agents are related according to a set…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2017-10-11 Roula Nassif , Cédric Richard , André Ferrari , Ali H. Sayed

We study the fundamental limits to communication-efficient distributed methods for convex learning and optimization, under different assumptions on the information available to individual machines, and the types of functions considered. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-10-29 Yossi Arjevani , Ohad Shamir