Large Sparse Numerical Optimization

Papers from a workshop held at Cornell University, Oct. 1989, and sponsored by Cornell's Mathematical Sciences Institute. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Optimization is an important tool used in decision science and for the analysis of physical systems used in engineering. One can trace its roots to the Calculus of Variations and the work of Euler and Lagrange. This natural and reasonable approach to mathematical programming covers numerical methods for finite-dimensional optimization problems. It begins with very simple ideas progressing through more complicated concepts, concentrating on methods for both unconstrained and constrained optimization.

Mathematics of Computing -- General.

Sparse Matrix Computations is a collection of papers presented at the 1975 Symposium by the same title, held at Argonne National Laboratory. This book is composed of six parts encompassing 27 chapters that contain contributions in several areas of matrix computations and some of the most potential research in numerical linear algebra. The papers are organized into general categories that deal, respectively, with sparse elimination, sparse eigenvalue calculations, optimization, mathematical software for sparse matrix computations, partial differential equations, and applications involving sparse matrix technology. This text presents research on applied numerical analysis but with considerable influence from computer science. In particular, most of the papers deal with the design, analysis, implementation, and application of computer algorithms. Such an emphasis includes the establishment of space and time complexity bounds and to understand the algorithms and the computing environment. This book will prove useful to mathematicians and computer scientists.

Seeking sparse solutions of underdetermined linear systems is required in many areas of engineering and science such as signal and image processing. The efficient sparse representation becomes central in various big or high-dimensional data processing, yielding fruitful theoretical and realistic results in these fields. The mathematical optimization plays a fundamentally important role in the development of these results and acts as the mainstream numerical algorithms for the sparsity-seeking problems arising from big-data processing, compressed sensing, statistical learning, computer vision, and so on. This has attracted the interest of many researchers at the interface of engineering, mathematics and computer science. Sparse Optimization Theory and Methods presents the state of the art in theory and algorithms for signal recovery under the sparsity assumption. The up-to-date uniqueness conditions for the sparsest solution of underdertemined linear systems are described. The results for sparse signal recovery under the matrix property called range space property (RSP) are introduced, which is a deep and mild condition for the sparse signal to be recovered by convex optimization methods. This framework is generalized to 1-bit compressed sensing, leading to a novel sign recovery theory in this area. Two efficient sparsity-seeking algorithms, reweighted l1-minimization in primal space and the algorithm based on complementary slackness property, are presented. The theoretical efficiency of these algorithms is rigorously analysed in this book. Under the RSP assumption, the author also provides a novel and unified stability analysis for several popular optimization methods for sparse signal recovery, including l1-mininization, Dantzig selector and LASSO. This book incorporates recent development and the author’s latest research in the field that have not appeared in other books.

This book reviews and discusses recent advances in the development of methods and algorithms for nonlinear optimization and its applications, focusing on the large-dimensional case, the current forefront of much research. Individual chapters, contributed by eminent authorities, provide an up-to-date overview of the field from different and complementary standpoints, including theoretical analysis, algorithmic development, implementation issues and applications.

Starting from where a first course in convex optimization leaves off, this text presents a unified analysis of first-order optimization methods – including parallel-distributed algorithms – through the abstraction of monotone operators. With the increased computational power and availability of big data over the past decade, applied disciplines have demanded that larger and larger optimization problems be solved. This text covers the first-order convex optimization methods that are uniquely effective at solving these large-scale optimization problems. Readers will have the opportunity to construct and analyze many well-known classical and modern algorithms using monotone operators, and walk away with a solid understanding of the diverse optimization algorithms. Graduate students and researchers in mathematical optimization, operations research, electrical engineering, statistics, and computer science will appreciate this concise introduction to the theory of convex optimization algorithms.