Related papers: Discrete and Continuous Difference of Submodular M…

The domain of an optimization problem is seen as one of its most important characteristics. In particular, the distinction between continuous and discrete optimization is rather impactful. Based on this, the optimizing algorithm, analyzing…

In a nutshell, submodular functions encode an intuitive notion of diminishing returns. As a result, submodularity appears in many important machine learning tasks such as feature selection and data summarization. Although there has been a…

Submodular functions are relevant to machine learning for at least two reasons: (1) some problems may be expressed directly as the optimization of submodular functions and (2) the lovasz extension of submodular functions provides a useful…

In this paper we consider minimization of a difference-of-convex (DC) function with and without linear constraints. We first study a smooth approximation of a generic DC function, termed difference-of-Moreau-envelopes (DME) smoothing, where…

With the extensive application of submodularity, its generalizations are constantly being proposed. However, most of them are tailored for special problems. In this paper, we focus on quasi-submodularity, a universal generalization, which…

We consider the large sum of DC (Difference of Convex) functions minimization problem which appear in several different areas, especially in stochastic optimization and machine learning. Two DCA (DC Algorithm) based algorithms are proposed:…

Submodular functions have been studied extensively in machine learning and data mining. In particular, the optimization of submodular functions over the integer lattice (integer submodular functions) has recently attracted much interest,…

The Boosted Difference of Convex functions Algorithm (BDCA) was recently proposed for minimizing smooth difference of convex (DC) functions. BDCA accelerates the convergence of the classical Difference of Convex functions Algorithm (DCA)…

The paper deals with stochastic difference-of-convex functions (DC) programs, that is, optimization problems whose the cost function is a sum of a lower semicontinuous DC function and the expectation of a stochastic DC function with respect…

Stochastic optimization of continuous objectives is at the heart of modern machine learning. However, many important problems are of discrete nature and often involve submodular objectives. We seek to unleash the power of stochastic…

Submodular functions are a fundamental object of study in combinatorial optimization, economics, machine learning, etc. and exhibit a rich combinatorial structure. Many subclasses of submodular functions have also been well studied and…

In this paper, we study the convergence of an interior subgradient and proximal methods for a DC (difference of convex functions) constrained minimization problem.

A differentiable function is pseudoconvex if and only if its restrictions over straight lines are pseudoconvex. A differentiable function depending on one variable, defined on some closed interval $[a,b]$ is pseudoconvex if and only if…

With the increasing interest in applying the methodology of difference-of-convex (dc) optimization to diverse problems in engineering and statistics, this paper establishes the dc property of many well-known functions not previously known…

Multimodular functions, primarily used in the literature of queueing theory, discrete-event systems, and operations research, constitute a fundamental function class in discrete convex analysis. The objective of this paper is to clarify the…

In this paper we study the fundamental problems of maximizing a continuous non-monotone submodular function over the hypercube, both with and without coordinate-wise concavity. This family of optimization problems has several applications…

Higher-order tensor methods were recently proposed for minimizing smooth convex and nonconvex functions. Higher-order algorithms accelerate the convergence of the classical first-order methods thanks to the higher-order derivatives used in…

We investigate two new optimization problems -- minimizing a submodular function subject to a submodular lower bound constraint (submodular cover) and maximizing a submodular function subject to a submodular upper bound constraint…

We consider several coding discretizations of continuous functions which reflect their variation at some given precision. We study certain statistical and combinatorial properties of the sequence of finite words obtained by coding a typical…

We consider learning of submodular functions from data. These functions are important in machine learning and have a wide range of applications, e.g. data summarization, feature selection and active learning. Despite their combinatorial…