Numerical Experience with a Class of Self-Scaling Quasi-Newton Algorithms

Self-scaling quasi-Newton methods for unconstrained optimization depend upon updating the Hessian approximation by a formula which depends on two parameters (say, and ) such that = 1, = 0, and = 1 yield the unscaled Broyden family, the BFGS update, and the DFP update, respectively. In previous work, conditions were obtained on these parameters that imply global and superlinear convergence for self-scaling methods on convex objective functions. This paper discusses the practical performance of several new algorithms designed to satisfy these conditions.