Discrete Gradient Method: Derivative-Free Method for Nonsmooth Optimization

A new derivative-free method is developed for solving unconstrained nonsmooth optimization problems. This method is based on the notion of a discrete gradient. It is demonstrated that the discrete gradients can be used to approximate subgradients of a broad class of nonsmooth functions. It is also shown that the discrete gradients can be applied to find descent directions of nonsmooth functions. The preliminary results of numerical experiments with unconstrained nonsmooth optimization problems as well as the comparison of the proposed method with the nonsmooth optimization solver DNLP from CONOPT-GAMS and the derivative-free optimization solver CONDOR are presented.     

Lagrange Multipliers and mixed formulations for some inequality constrained variational inequalities and some nonsmooth unilateral problems

Abstract

This paper addresses a class of inequality constrained variational inequalities and nonsmooth unilateral variational problems. We present mixed formulations arising from Lagrange multipliers. First we treat in a reflexive Banach space setting the canonical case of a variational inequality that has as essential ingredients a bilinear form and a non-differentiable sublinear, hence convex functional and linear inequality constraints defined by a convex cone. We extend the famous Brezzi splitting theorem that originally covers saddle point problems with equality constraints, only, to these nonsmooth problems and obtain independent Lagrange multipliers in the subdifferential of the convex functional and in the ordering cone of the inequality constraints. For illustration of the theory we provide and investigate an example of a scalar nonsmooth boundary value problem that models frictional unilateral contact problems in linear elastostatics. Finally we discuss how this approach to mixed formulations can be further extended to variational problems with nonlinear operators and equilibrium problems, and moreover, to hemivariational inequalities.     

Envelope Functions: Unifications and Further Properties

Forward–backward and Douglas–Rachford splitting are methods for structured nonsmooth optimization. With the aim to use smooth optimization techniques for nonsmooth problems, the forward–backward and Douglas–Rachford envelopes where recently proposed. Under specific problem assumptions, these envelope functions have favorable smoothness and convexity properties and their stationary points coincide with the fixed-points of the underlying algorithm operators. This allows for solving such nonsmooth optimization problems by minimizing the corresponding smooth convex envelope function. In this paper, we present a general envelope function that unifies and generalizes existing ones. We provide properties of the general envelope function that sharpen corresponding known results for the special cases. We also present a new interpretation of the underlying methods as being majorization–minimization algorithms applied to their respective envelope functions.     

Limited memory discrete gradient bundle method for nonsmooth derivative-free optimization

Typically, practical nonsmooth optimization problems involve functions with hundreds of variables. Moreover, there are many practical problems where the computation of even one subgradient is either a difficult or an impossible task. In such cases derivative-free methods are the better (or only) choice since they do not use explicit computation of subgradients. However, these methods require a large number of function evaluations even for moderately large problems. In this article, we propose an efficient derivative-free limited memory discrete gradient bundle method for nonsmooth, possibly nonconvex optimization. The convergence of the proposed method is proved for locally Lipschitz continuous functions and the numerical experiments to be presented confirm the usability of the method especially for medium size and large-scale problems.     

Derivative-free optimization: a review of algorithms and comparison of software implementations

This paper addresses the solution of bound-constrained optimization problems using algorithms that require only the availability of objective function values but no derivative information. We refer to these algorithms as derivative-free algorithms. Fueled by a growing number of applications in science and engineering, the development of derivative-free optimization algorithms has long been studied, and it has found renewed interest in recent time. Along with many derivative-free algorithms, many software implementations have also appeared. The paper presents a review of derivative-free algorithms, followed by a systematic comparison of 22 related implementations using a test set of 502 problems. The test bed includes convex and nonconvex problems, smooth as well as nonsmooth problems. The algorithms were tested under the same conditions and ranked under several criteria, including their ability to find near-global solutions for nonconvex problems, improve a given starting point, and refine a near-optimal solution. A total of 112,448 problem instances were solved. We find that the ability of all these solvers to obtain good solutions diminishes with increasing problem size. For the problems used in this study, TOMLAB/MULTIMIN, TOMLAB/GLCCLUSTER, MCS and TOMLAB/LGO are better, on average, than other derivative-free solvers in terms of solution quality within 2,500 function evaluations. These global solvers outperform local solvers even for convex problems. Finally, TOMLAB/OQNLP, NEWUOA, and TOMLAB/MULTIMIN show superior performance in terms of refining a near-optimal solution.     

Nonsmooth Bundle Trust-region Algorithm with Applications to Robust Stability

We propose a bundle trust-region algorithm to minimize locally Lipschitz functions which are potentially nonsmooth and nonconvex. We prove global convergence of our method and show by way of an example that the classical convergence argument in trust-region methods based on the Cauchy point fails in the nonsmooth setting. Our method is tested experimentally on three problems in automatic control.     

A progressive barrier derivative-free trust-region algorithm for constrained optimization

We study derivative-free constrained optimization problems and propose a trust-region method that builds linear or quadratic models around the best feasible and around the best infeasible solutions found so far. These models are optimized within a trust region, and the progressive barrier methodology handles the constraints by progressively pushing the infeasible solutions toward the feasible domain. Computational experiments on 40 smooth constrained problems indicate that the proposed method is competitive with COBYLA, and experiments on two nonsmooth multidisciplinary optimization problems from mechanical engineering show that it can be competitive with the NOMAD software.     

Convergence of descent methods for semi-algebraic and tame problems: proximal algorithms, forward–backward splitting, and regularized Gauss–Seidel methods

In view of the minimization of a nonsmooth nonconvex function f, we prove an abstract convergence result for descent methods satisfying a sufficient-decrease assumption, and allowing a relative error tolerance. Our result guarantees the convergence of bounded sequences, under the assumption that the function f satisfies the Kurdyka–?ojasiewicz inequality. This assumption allows to cover a wide range of problems, including nonsmooth semi-algebraic (or more generally tame) minimization. The specialization of our result to different kinds of structured problems provides several new convergence results for inexact versions of the gradient method, the proximal method, the forward–backward splitting algorithm, the gradient projection and some proximal regularization of the Gauss–Seidel method in a nonconvex setting. Our results are illustrated through feasibility problems, or iterative thresholding procedures for compressive sensing.     

Mesh adaptive direct search algorithms for mixed variable optimization

This paper introduces a new derivative-free class of mesh adaptive direct search (MADS) algorithms for solving constrained mixed variable optimization problems, in which the variables may be continuous or categorical. This new class of algorithms, called mixed variable MADS (MV-MADS), generalizes both mixed variable pattern search (MVPS) algorithms for linearly constrained mixed variable problems and MADS algorithms for general constrained problems with only continuous variables. The convergence analysis, which makes use of the Clarke nonsmooth calculus, similarly generalizes the existing theory for both MVPS and MADS algorithms, and reasonable conditions are established for ensuring convergence of a subsequence of iterates to a suitably defined stationary point in the nonsmooth and mixed variable sense.     

An Inexact PRP Conjugate Gradient Method for Symmetric Nonlinear Equations

In this article, without computing exact gradient and Jacobian, we proposed a derivative-free Polak-Ribière-Polyak (PRP) method for solving nonlinear equations whose Jacobian is symmetric. This method is a generalization of the classical PRP method for unconstrained optimization problems. By utilizing the symmetric structure of the system sufficiently, we prove global convergence of the proposed method with some backtracking type line search under suitable assumptions. Moreover, we extend the proposed method to nonsmooth equations by adopting the smoothing technique. We also report some numerical results to show its efficiency.     

A Primal–Dual Splitting Method for Convex Optimization Involving Lipschitzian, Proximable and Linear Composite Terms

We propose a new first-order splitting algorithm for solving jointly the primal and dual formulations of large-scale convex minimization problems involving the sum of a smooth function with Lipschitzian gradient, a nonsmooth proximable function, and linear composite functions. This is a full splitting approach, in the sense that the gradient and the linear operators involved are applied explicitly without any inversion, while the nonsmooth functions are processed individually via their proximity operators. This work brings together and notably extends several classical splitting schemes, like the forward–backward and Douglas–Rachford methods, as well as the recent primal–dual method of Chambolle and Pock designed for problems with linear composite terms.     

Smoothing Newton method for nonsmooth second-order cone complementarity problems with application to electric power markets

This paper is dedicated to solving a nonsmooth second-order cone complementarity problem, in which the mapping is assumed to be locally Lipschitz continuous, but not necessarily to be continuously differentiable everywhere. With the help of the vector-valued Fischer-Burmeister function associated with second-order cones, the nonsmooth second-order cone complementarity problem can be equivalently transformed into a system of nonsmooth equations. To deal with this reformulated nonsmooth system, we present an approximation function by smoothing the inner mapping and the outer Fischer-Burmeister function simultaneously. Different from traditional smoothing methods, the smoothing parameter introduced is treated as an independent variable. We give some conditions under which the Jacobian of the smoothing approximation function is guaranteed to be nonsingular. Based on these results, we propose a smoothing Newton method for solving the nonsmooth second-order cone complementarity problem and show that the proposed method achieves globally superlinear or quadratic convergence under suitable assumptions. Finally, we apply the smoothing Newton method to a network Nash-Cournot game in oligopolistic electric power markets and report some numerical results to demonstrate its effectiveness.

     

A globally convergent derivative-free method for solving large-scale nonlinear monotone equations

In this paper, we propose two derivative-free iterative methods for solving nonlinear monotone equations, which combines two modified HS methods with the projection method in Solodov and Svaiter (1998) [5]. The proposed methods can be applied to solve nonsmooth equations. They are suitable to large-scale equations due to their lower storage requirement. Under mild conditions, we show that the proposed methods are globally convergent. The reported numerical results show that the methods are efficient.     

求解非线性单调方程组的一种无导数投影算法

推广了一种修正的CG_DESCENT共轭梯度方法,并建立了一种有效求解非线性单调方程组问题的无导数投影算法.在适当的线搜索条件下,证明了算法的全局收敛性.由于新算法不需要借助任何导数信息,故它适应于求解大规模非光滑的非线性单调方程组问题.大量的数值试验表明,新算法对给定的测试问题是有效的.     

An approximate bundle method for solving nonsmooth equilibrium problems

We present an approximate bundle method for solving nonsmooth equilibrium problems. An inexact cutting-plane linearization of the objective function is established at each iteration, which is actually an approximation produced by an oracle that gives inaccurate values for the functions and subgradients. The errors in function and subgradient evaluations are bounded and they need not vanish in the limit. A descent criterion adapting the setting of inexact oracles is put forward to measure the current descent behavior. The sequence generated by the algorithm converges to the approximately critical points of the equilibrium problem under proper assumptions. As a special illustration, the proposed algorithm is utilized to solve generalized variational inequality problems. The numerical experiments show that the algorithm is effective in solving nonsmooth equilibrium problems.     

Forward–backward quasi-Newton methods for nonsmooth optimization problems

The forward–backward splitting method (FBS) for minimizing a nonsmooth composite function can be interpreted as a (variable-metric) gradient method over a continuously differentiable function which we call forward–backward envelope (FBE). This allows to extend algorithms for smooth unconstrained optimization and apply them to nonsmooth (possibly constrained) problems. Since the FBE can be computed by simply evaluating forward–backward steps, the resulting methods rely on a similar black-box oracle as FBS. We propose an algorithmic scheme that enjoys the same global convergence properties of FBS when the problem is convex, or when the objective function possesses the Kurdyka–?ojasiewicz property at its critical points. Moreover, when using quasi-Newton directions the proposed method achieves superlinear convergence provided that usual second-order sufficiency conditions on the FBE hold at the limit point of the generated sequence. Such conditions translate into milder requirements on the original function involving generalized second-order differentiability. We show that BFGS fits our framework and that the limited-memory variant L-BFGS is well suited for large-scale problems, greatly outperforming FBS or its accelerated version in practice, as well as ADMM and other problem-specific solvers. The analysis of superlinear convergence is based on an extension of the Dennis and Moré theorem for the proposed algorithmic scheme.     

A note on upper Lipschitz stability, error bounds, and critical multipliers for Lipschitz-continuous KKT systems

We prove a new local upper Lipschitz stability result and the associated local error bound for solutions of parametric Karush–Kuhn–Tucker systems corresponding to variational problems with Lipschitzian base mappings and constraints possessing Lipschitzian derivatives, and without any constraint qualifications. This property is equivalent to the appropriately extended to this nonsmooth setting notion of noncriticality of the Lagrange multiplier associated to the primal solution, which is weaker than second-order sufficiency. All this extends several results previously known only for optimization problems with twice differentiable data, or assuming some constraint qualifications. In addition, our results are obtained in the more general variational setting.     

What can interval analysis do for global optimization?

An overview of interval arithmetical tools and basic techniques is presented that can be used to construct deterministic global optimization algorithms. These tools are applicable to unconstrained and constrained optimization as well as to nonsmooth optimization and to problems over unbounded domains. Since almost all interval based global optimization algorithms use branch-and-bound methods with iterated bisection of the problem domain we also embed our overview in such a setting.     

Constraint qualifications for nonsmooth programming

ABSTRACT

By using an implicit function theorem and a result of error bound, we provide new constraint qualifications ensuring the Karush–Kuhn–Tuker necessary optimality conditions for both smooth and nonsmooth optimization problems in normed spaces or Banach spaces.     

Communication-efficient algorithms for decentralized and stochastic optimization

Mathematical Programming - We present a new class of decentralized first-order methods for nonsmooth and stochastic optimization problems defined over multiagent networks. Considering that...