1,898 research outputs found
Inexact Block Coordinate Descent Algorithms for Nonsmooth Nonconvex Optimization
In this paper, we propose an inexact block coordinate descent algorithm for
large-scale nonsmooth nonconvex optimization problems. At each iteration, a
particular block variable is selected and updated by inexactly solving the
original optimization problem with respect to that block variable. More
precisely, a local approximation of the original optimization problem is
solved. The proposed algorithm has several attractive features, namely, i) high
flexibility, as the approximation function only needs to be strictly convex and
it does not have to be a global upper bound of the original function; ii) fast
convergence, as the approximation function can be designed to exploit the
problem structure at hand and the stepsize is calculated by the line search;
iii) low complexity, as the approximation subproblems are much easier to solve
and the line search scheme is carried out over a properly constructed
differentiable function; iv) guaranteed convergence of a subsequence to a
stationary point, even when the objective function does not have a Lipschitz
continuous gradient. Interestingly, when the approximation subproblem is solved
by a descent algorithm, convergence of a subsequence to a stationary point is
still guaranteed even if the approximation subproblem is solved inexactly by
terminating the descent algorithm after a finite number of iterations. These
features make the proposed algorithm suitable for large-scale problems where
the dimension exceeds the memory and/or the processing capability of the
existing hardware. These features are also illustrated by several applications
in signal processing and machine learning, for instance, network anomaly
detection and phase retrieval
Data-Driven Chance Constrained Optimization under Wasserstein Ambiguity Sets
We present a data-driven approach for distributionally robust chance
constrained optimization problems (DRCCPs). We consider the case where the
decision maker has access to a finite number of samples or realizations of the
uncertainty. The chance constraint is then required to hold for all
distributions that are close to the empirical distribution constructed from the
samples (where the distance between two distributions is defined via the
Wasserstein metric). We first reformulate DRCCPs under data-driven Wasserstein
ambiguity sets and a general class of constraint functions. When the
feasibility set of the chance constraint program is replaced by its convex
inner approximation, we present a convex reformulation of the program and show
its tractability when the constraint function is affine in both the decision
variable and the uncertainty. For constraint functions concave in the
uncertainty, we show that a cutting-surface algorithm converges to an
approximate solution of the convex inner approximation of DRCCPs. Finally, for
constraint functions convex in the uncertainty, we compare the feasibility set
with other sample-based approaches for chance constrained programs.Comment: A shorter version is submitted to the American Control Conference,
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