# Questions tagged [optimization]

general questions about selecting a best element from some set of available alternatives.

354 questions
Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
36 views

### Scheduling and routing

Given: $k > 1$ sales execs, each specializing in one of 4 lines of business (LOBs), where each exec works (sales and travel) at 7.5 hours / day $n > 1$ client sites. Constraints: Each ...
44 views

### Is there any better optimization way instead of finite automata? [closed]

For example, I have a program with finite states count. I'm using finite automata with manual optimization for this program with measurable performance grow. What are the alternative math techniques ...
14 views

### Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem with multiple pickups at some sites but constrained to max 1 pickup per vehicle per site

I am looking for literature or code for a variant of capacitated vehicle routing problem. The variance is that some sites have multiple items for pickup, but there is a constraint such that even if a ...
70 views

46 views

42 views

### AMQ (Bloom-filter like structure) lower bounds

I want an Approximate Member Query structure (that is, something like Bloom filter), but with the highest possible compression ratio. I know that for AMQs where query is done in constant time, the ...
69 views

108 views

### Finding the maximum no. of people who get along in a group [closed]

Suppose that there are 15 people in a room. Assume that each person gets along with other people in the room (but not everyone). (Note that the "feeling is mutual" between any two people who are ...
30 views

### Alternating Delivery Problem

What is known about the complexity of the following problem: Suppose we have a complete bipartite graph $G(V,E)$ with disjoint sets $C$ and $T$. The candidate vertices, and the target vertices ...
95 views

### Vehicle scheduling

Suppose there are $n$ resources which can do some work. Each resource has a number of time windows: $tw_{i,k}=\{start_{i, k},stop_{i, k}\}$, such that the resource can perform its functions only ...
61 views

### Problems rephrased as quadratic unconstrained binary optimization

I was impressed when i came across Quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) recently, and saw how one can rephrase many combinatorial problems into questions about optima of binary functions....
144 views

### Intuitive explanation behind Goemans-Williamson randomized rounding

A very simple randomized cut algorithm achieves $1/2$ of the optimal value: just choose each vertex to be in the cut with probability $1/2$, independently. Goemans-Williamson does something more ...
96 views

### 3 dimensional matching shortest solution NP-hard?

We have array of arbitrary number of elements - 3d vectors with positive integers components - for example ...
143 views

### Generalizations of linear programming

Linear problems can be solved in polynomial time. So can semidefinite programs and, presumably, many other useful classes of optimization programs. Is there a survey/lecture notes describing ...
75 views

### Bellman-Ford with Non-edge-decomposable Path Weights

Consider a directed graph $G(V,E)$ with non-negative edge weights. Also, let us define the weight of a path as non-edge-decomposable, that is, the weight of a path cannot be written as the sum of a ...
124 views

### Star seperators to explain computational complexity of algorithms on a class of graphs?

A lot of NP-hard optimization problems on graphs which are perfect become solvable in polynomial time. Unfortunately, the class of graphs that arise in my problem are not perfect. The graphs can be ...
108 views

39 views

### Variability of gradient estimates and convergence rate in stochastic gradient descent/ascent

I am aware that convergence in stochastic gradient problems is very sensitive to the variance of your gradient estimator. One issue I'm running into is that the gradient is a random vector and so ...
55 views

### Minimization of the maximal adjacent integer sums on a circle

Arrange $\{1,2,\cdots,n\}$ on a circle. What are the arrangements that minimize the maximal sum of all adjacent $k$ integers? For specific and low $n$'s it has been pointed out in math.stackexchange....
77 views

### Primal/Dual of the Lasserre/ SOS SDP hierarchy

Sum of Squares proofs and the Lasserre hierarchy can both be stated as SDPs. It is often claimed without proof that these SDPs are dual to each other, although I do not see that this is obvious. I was ...
443 views

### Minimum Union-Sum Cost Path

I have a minimum cost path selection problem that is different from the usual shortest path in that each type of cost is accounted only once in the total cost of the path if multiple edges on the path ...
85 views

### Partitioning a square for optimal queries

I have a square plate of size 1x1, full of lots of skittles. I want to eat all of the skittles, but the only way I can get the skittles is through these two oracles: $f(x, y, r)$ tells me how many ...
47 views

### Algorithm for finding smallest set and instanciation for a given constraint system

I have a system of constraints described by a set of clauses of the form $x_1 \neq x_2 \lor \dots \lor x_{i-1} \neq x_i$, for instance: ...
89 views

### Showing hardness of maximizing stochastic objective function over graph

Consider a graph $G = (V, E)$ with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges. Each vertex $v_i$ can take positive value $a_i$ with probability $p_i$ and value $0$ with probability $1-p_i$. The challenge is to ...
63 views

### About using smoothness of the Hessian for getting to approximate criticality of a non-convex objective

Is there any algorithm which shows that under the assumption of Lipschitz smoothness of the Hessian of a non-convex function one can get to its critical point faster?
33 views

### Getting to local/global minima with (stochastic) gradient descent on non-convex objectives

Is there any class of non-convex objective functions for which (stochastic) gradient descent can provably get to a local or a global minima? (..maybe in the approximate sense like a point such that ...
221 views

### Optimal partition according to partition cardinality

Given $N$ sets of integers $S_1, \ldots,S_N$ with $|S_i| \le K$. We want to partition those sets such that the union of all sets in any given partition doesn't contain more than $K$ elements. Can ...
193 views

### Monotone supermodular function minimization under partition matroid constraints

Is there a known approximation algorithm for the problem of minimizing a monotone (non increasing) supermodular function under partition matroid constraints ?