Search

This paper studies a distributionally robust multi-item newsvendor problem, where the demand distribution is unknown but specified with a general event-wise ambiguity set. Using the event-wise affine decision rules, we can obtain a conservative approximation formulation of the problem, which can typically be further reformulated as a linear program. In order to efficiently solve the resulting large-scale linear program, we develop a column generation-based decomposition scheme and speed up the computational efficiency by exploiting a special column selection strategy and stopping early based on a Karush-Kuhn-Tucker condition test. Focusing on the Wasserstein ambiguity set and the event-wise mean absolute deviation set, a computational study demonstrates both the computational efficiency of the proposed algorithm, which significantly outperforms a commercial solver and a Benders decomposition method, and the out-of-sample superiority of distributionally robust solutions relative to their sample average approximation counterparts. History: Accepted by Nicola Secomandi, Area Editor for Stochastic Models & Reinforcement Learning. Funding: This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [492997-2016, RGPIN-2016-05208], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71972012], Alliance de recherche numérique du Canada, and Canada Research Chairs [CRC-2018-00105]. It was also supported by Groupe d'études et de recherche en analyse des décisions (GERAD). Finally, this research was enabled in part by support provided by Digital Research Alliance of Canada (https://alliancecan.ca/en). Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its supplemental information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0010) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0010). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the problem of finding maximum volume (axis-aligned) inscribed boxes in a compact convex set, defined by a finite number of convex inequalities, and presents optimization and geometric approaches for solving them. Several optimization models are developed that can be easily generalized to find other inscribed geometric shapes such as triangles, rhombi, and squares. To find the largest volume axis-aligned inscribed rectangles in the higher dimensions, an interior-point method algorithm is presented and analyzed. For two-dimensional space, a parametrized optimization approach is developed to find the largest area (axis-aligned) inscribed rectangles in convex sets. The optimization approach provides a uniform framework for solving a wide variety of relevant problems. Finally, two computational geometric (1−ε) –approximation algorithms with sublinear running times are presented that improve the previous results. History: Accepted by Antonio Frangioni, Area Editor for Design & Analysis of Algorithms—Continuous. Funding: The author is grateful for the support of Northeastern University for this research. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0239) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0239). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the cardinality constrained mean-variance portfolio optimization, in which only a small number of assets are invested. We first treat the covariance matrix of asset returns as a diagonal matrix with a special matrix processing technique. Using the dual theory, we formulate the lower bound problem of the original problem as a max-min optimization. For the inner minimization problem with the cardinality constraint, we obtain its analytical solution for the portfolio weights. Then, the lower bound problem turns out to be a simple concave optimization with respect to the Lagrangian multipliers. Thus, the interval split method and the supergradient method are developed to solve it. Based on the precise lower bound, the depth-first branch and bound method are designed to find the global optimal investment selection strategy. Compared with other lower bounds and the current popular mixed integer programming solvers, such as CPLEX and SCIP, the numerical experiments show that our method has a high searching efficiency. History: Accepted by Pascal Van Hentenryck, Area Editor for Computational Modeling: Methods & Analysis. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 12101317, 12271071, and 11991024], the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province [Grant BK20200819], the Team Project of Innovation Leading Talent in Chongqing [Grant CQYC20210309536], the Contract System Project of Chongqing Talent Plan [Grant cstc2022ycjh-bgzxm0147], and the Philosophy and Social Science Fund of Education Department of Jiangsu Province [Grant 2020SJA0168]. K.F.C. Yiu is supported in part by the Research Grants Council of Hong Hong [Grant PolyU 15223419], the Hong Kong Polytechnic University [Grants 4-ZZPT and 1-WZ0E], and the Research Centre for Quantitative Finance [Grant 1-CE03]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0344) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0344). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the abundance of images related to operations that are being captured and stored, it behooves firms to innovate systems using image processing to improve operational performance that refers to any activity that can save labor cost. In this paper, we use deep learning techniques, combined with classic image/signal processing methods, to propose a pipeline to solve certain types of object counting and layer characterization problems in firm operations. Using data obtained by us through a collaborative effort with real manufacturers, we demonstrate that the proposed pipeline method is able to achieve higher than 93% accuracy in layer and log counting. Theoretically, our study conceives, constructs, and evaluates proof of concept of a novel pipeline method in characterizing and quantifying the number of defined items with images, which overcomes the limitations of methods based only on deep learning or signal processing. Practically, our proposed method can help firms significantly reduce labor costs and/or improve quality and inventory control by recording the number of products in real time, more accurately and with minimal up-front technological investment. The codes and data are made publicly available online through the INFORMS Journal on Computing GitHub site. History: Accepted by Ram Ramesh, Area Editor for Data Science and Machine Learning. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0260) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0260). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A gray market emerges when some distributors divert products to unauthorized distributors/retailers to make sneaky profits from the manufacturers' differential channel incentives, such as quantity discounts. Traditionally, manufacturers rely heavily on internal audits to periodically investigate the flows of products and funds so as to deter the gray market; however, this is too costly given the large number of distributors and their huge volumes of orders. Owing to the advances in data analytics techniques, the ordering quantities of a distributor over time, which form multivariate time series, can help reveal suspicious product diversion behaviors and narrow the audit scope drastically. To that end, in this paper, we build on the recent advancement of representation learning for time series and adopt a sequence autoencoder to automatically characterize the overall demand patterns. To cope with the underlying entangled factors and interfering information in the multivariate time series of ordering quantities, we develop a disentangled learning scheme to construct more effective sequence representations. An interdistributor correlation regularization is also proposed to ensure more reliable representations. Finally, given the highly scarce anomaly labels for the detection task, an unsupervised deep generative model based on the learned representations of the distributors is developed to estimate the densities of distributions, which enables the anomaly scores generated through end-to-end learning. Extensive experiments on a real-world distribution channel data set and a larger simulated data set empirically validate our model's superior and robust performances compared with several state-of-the-art baselines. Additionally, our illustrative economic analysis demonstrates that the manufacturers can launch more targeted and cost-effective audits toward the suspected distributors recommended by our model so as to deter the gray market. History: Accepted by Ram Ramesh, Area Editor for Data Science & Machine Learning. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72031001, 72301017, 72371011, and 72242101]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0155) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0155). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chemotherapy drug administration is a complex problem that often requires expensive clinical trials to evaluate potential regimens; one way to alleviate this burden and better inform future trials is to build reliable models for drug administration. This paper presents a mixed-integer program for combination chemotherapy (utilization of multiple drugs) optimization that incorporates various important operational constraints and, besides dose and concentration limits, controls treatment toxicity based on its effect on the count of white blood cells. To address the uncertainty of tumor heterogeneity, we also propose chance constraints that guarantee reaching an operable tumor size with a high probability in a neoadjuvant setting. We present analytical results pertinent to the accuracy of the model in representing biological processes of chemotherapy and establish its potential for clinical applications through a numerical study of breast cancer. History: Accepted by Paul Brooks, Area Editor for Applications in Biology, Medicine, & Healthcare. Funding: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [Grants CMMI-1933369 and CMMI-1933373]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0207) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0207). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of proper equilibrium was established as a strict refinement of perfect equilibrium. This establishment has significantly advanced the development of game theory and its applications. Nonetheless, it remains a challenging problem to compute such an equilibrium. This paper develops a differentiable path-following method with a compact formulation to compute a proper equilibrium. The method incorporates square-root-barrier terms into payoff functions with an extra variable and constitutes a square-root-barrier game. As a result of this barrier game, we acquire a smooth path to a proper equilibrium. To further reduce the computational burden, we present a compact formulation of an ε-proper equilibrium with a polynomial number of variables and equations. Numerical results show that the differentiable path-following method is numerically stable and efficient. Moreover, by relaxing the requirements of proper equilibrium and imposing Selten's perfection, we come up with the notion of perfect d-proper equilibrium, which approximates a proper equilibrium and is less costly to compute. Numerical examples demonstrate that even when d is rather large, a perfect d-proper equilibrium remains to be a proper equilibrium. History: Accepted by Antonio Frangioni, Area Editor for Design & Analysis of Algorithms-Continuous. Funding: This work was partially supported by General Research Fund (GRF) CityU 11306821 of Hong Kong SAR Government. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0148) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0148). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present BilevelJuMP.jl, a new Julia package to support bilevel optimization within the JuMP framework. The package is a Julia library that enables the user to describe both upper and lower-level optimization problems using the JuMP algebraic syntax. Because of the generality and flexibility that our library inherits from JuMP's syntax, our package allows users to model bilevel optimization problems with conic constraints in the lower level and all constraints supported by JuMP in the upper level including conic, quadratic, and nonlinear constraints. Moreover, the models defined with the syntax from BilevelJuMP.jl can be solved by multiple techniques that are based on reformulations as mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints (MPEC). Manipulations on the original problem data are possible due to MathOptInterface.jl's structures and Dualization.jl features. Hence, the proposed package allows quick modeling, deployment, and thereby experimenting with bilevel models based on off-the-shelf mixed-integer linear programming and nonlinear solvers. History: Accepted by Ted Ralphs, Area Editor for Software Tools. Funding: The authors were partially supported by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001. The work of A. Street was also partially supported by Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq). The work was partially funded by the project P&D ANEEL PD-00403-0050/2020 sponsored by ENGIE BRASIL ENERGIA S.A. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0135) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0135). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been an increasing need to understand the complex interdependencies between critical infrastructure systems, for example, electric power, natural gas, and potable water. Whereas open-source and commercial tools for the independent simulation of these systems are well established, frameworks for cosimulation with other systems are nascent and tools for co-optimization are scarce—the major challenge being the hidden combinatorics that arise when connecting multiple-infrastructure system models. Building toward a comprehensive solution for modeling interdependent infrastructure systems, this work presents InfrastructureModels, an extensible, open-source mathematical programming framework for co-optimizing multiple interdependent infrastructures. This work provides new insights into methods and programming abstractions that make state-of-the-art independent infrastructure models composable with minimal additional effort. To that end, this paper presents the design of the InfrastructureModels framework, documents key components of the software's implementation, and demonstrates its effectiveness with three case studies on canonical co-optimization tasks arising in interdependent infrastructure systems. History: Accepted by Ted Ralphs, Area Editor for Software Tools. Funding: The work was funded by Los Alamos National Laboratory's Directed Research and Development project "The Optimization of Machine Learning: Imposing Requirements on Artificial Intelligence" and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Electricity Advanced Grid Modeling projects "Joint Power System and Natural Gas Pipeline Optimal Expansion Planning" and "Coordinated Planning and Operation of Water and Power Infrastructures for Increased Resilience and Reliability." This work was carried out under the U.S. DOE contract no. [DE-AC52-06NA25396]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0118) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0118). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rank aggregation combines the preference rankings of multiple alternatives from different voters into a single consensus ranking, providing a useful model for a variety of practical applications but posing a computationally challenging problem. In this paper, we provide an effective hybrid evolutionary ranking algorithm to solve the rank aggregation problem with both complete and partial rankings. The algorithm features a semantic crossover based on concordant pairs and an enhanced late acceptance local search method reinforced by a relaxed acceptance and replacement strategy and a fast incremental evaluation mechanism. Experiments are conducted to assess the algorithm, indicating a highly competitive performance on both synthetic and real-world benchmark instances compared with state-of-the-art algorithms. To demonstrate its practical usefulness, the algorithm is applied to label ranking, a well-established machine learning task. We additionally analyze several key algorithmic components to gain insight into their operation. History: Accepted by Erwin Pesch, Area Editor for Heuristic Search & Approximation Algorithms. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72371157] and Shanghai Pujiang Programme [Grant 23PJC069]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0019) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0019). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sample average approximation (SAA), the standard approach to stochastic mixed-integer programming, does not provide guidance for cases with limited computational budgets. In such settings, variance reduction is critical in identifying good decisions. This paper explores two closely related ensemble methods to determine effective decisions with a probabilistic guarantee. (a) The first approach recommends a decision by coordinating aggregation in the space of decisions as well as aggregation of objective values. This combination of aggregation methods generalizes the bagging method and the "compromise decision" of stochastic linear programming. Combining these concepts, we propose a stopping rule that provides an upper bound on the probability of early termination. (b) The second approach applies efficient computational budget allocation for objective function evaluation and contributes to identifying the best solution with a predicted lower bound on the probability of correct selection. It also reduces the variance of the upper bound estimate at optimality. Furthermore, it adaptively selects the evaluation sample size. Both approaches provide approximately optimal solutions even in cases with a huge number of scenarios, especially when scenarios are generated by using oracles/simulators. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of these methods via extensive computational results for "megascale" (extremely large scale) stochastic facility location problems. History: Accepted by Pascal Van Hentenryck, Area Editor for Computational Modeling: Methods & Analysis. Funding: This work was supported by The Office of Naval Research [Grant N00014-20-1-2077] and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research [Grant FA9550-20-1-0006]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2021.0324) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2021.0324). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ride-hailing services have expanded the role of shared mobility in passenger transportation systems, creating new markets and creative planning solutions for major urban centers. In this paper, we consider their use for the first-mile or last-mile passenger transportation in coordination with a mass transit service to provide a seamless multimodal transportation experience for the user. A system that provides passengers with predictable information on travel and waiting times in their commutes is immensely valuable. We envision that the passengers will inform the system of their desired travel and arrival windows so that the system can jointly optimize the schedules of passengers. The problem we study balances minimizing travel time and the number of trips taken by the last-mile vehicles, so that long-term planning, maintenance, and environmental impact are all taken into account. We focus on the case where the last-mile service aggregates passengers by destination. We show that this problem is NP-hard, and we propose a decision diagram–based branch-and-price decomposition model that can solve instances of real-world size (10,000 passengers spread over an hour, 50 last-mile destinations, 600 last-mile vehicles) in computational time (∼1 minute) that is orders of magnitude faster than the solution times of other methods appearing in the literature. Our experiments also indicate that aggregating passengers by destination on the last-mile service provides high-quality solutions to more general settings. History: Accepted by Pascal Van Hentenryck, Area Editor for Computational Modeling: Methods and Analysis. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2019.0163) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2019.0163). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LU and Cholesky matrix factorization algorithms are core subroutines used to solve systems of linear equations (SLEs) encountered when solving an optimization problem. Standard floating-point algorithms are highly efficient but remain susceptible to the accumulation of round-off errors, which can lead solvers to return feasibility and optimality claims that are actually invalid. This paper introduces a novel direct solution approach for solving sequences of closely related SLEs encountered in nonlinear programming efficiently and without round-off errors. Specifically, it introduces rank-one update algorithms for the round-off error–free factorization framework, a tool set built on integer-preserving arithmetic that has led to the development and implementation of extremely reliable subroutines for solving SLEs occurring in linear programming. The formal guarantees of the presented algorithms are established through the derivation of theoretical insights. Their advantages are supported with computational experiments, which demonstrate upward of 75× improvements over exact factorization runtimes on fully dense matrices with more than one million entries. A significant advantage of the featured integer-preserving framework is that the length of any matrix coefficient produced by its algorithms is bounded polynomially in the size of the inputs without having to resort to greatest common divisor operations, which are required by and thereby hinder an efficient implementation of exact rational arithmetic approaches. History: Accepted by Antonio Frangioni, Area Editor for Design & Analysis of Algorithms–Continuous. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2021.0331) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2021.0331). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online reviews published on the e-commerce platform provide a new source of information for designers to develop new products. Past research on new product development (NPD) using user-generated textual data commonly focused solely on extracting and identifying product features to be improved. However, the competitive analysis of product features and more specific improvement strategies have not been explored deeply. This study fully uses the rich semantic attributes of online review texts and proposes a novel online review–driven modeling framework. This new approach can extract fine-grained product features; calculate their importance, performance, and competitiveness; and build a competitiveness network for each feature. As a result, decision making is assisted, and specific product improvement strategies are developed for NPD beyond existing modeling approaches in this domain. Specifically, online reviews are first classified into redesign- and innovation-related themes using a multiple embedding model, and the redesign and innovation product features can be extracted accordingly using a mutual information multilevel feature extraction method. Moreover, the importance and performance of features are calculated, and the competitiveness and competitiveness network of features are obtained through a personalized unidirectional bipartite graph algorithm. Finally, the importance performance competitiveness analysis plot is constructed, and the product improvement strategy is developed via a multistage combined search algorithm. Case studies and comparative experiments show the effectiveness of the proposed method and provide novel business insights for stakeholders, such as product providers, managers, and designers. History: Accepted by Ram Ramesh, Area Editor for Data Science and Machine Learning. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Project 72071151] and the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province, China [Grant 2023CFB712]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0333) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0333). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We apply supervised learning to a general problem in queueing theory: using a neural net, we develop a fast and accurate predictor of the stationary system-length distribution of a GI/GI/1 queue—a fundamental queueing model for which no analytical solutions are available. To this end, we must overcome three main challenges: (i) generating a large library of training instances that cover a wide range of arbitrary interarrival and service time distributions, (ii) labeling the training instances, and (iii) providing continuous arrival and service distributions as inputs to the neural net. To overcome (i), we develop an algorithm to sample phase-type interarrival and service time distributions with complex transition structures. We demonstrate that our distribution-generating algorithm indeed covers a wide range of possible positive-valued distributions. For (ii), we label our training instances via quasi-birth-and-death(QBD) that was used to approximate PH/PH/1 (with phase-type arrival and service process) as labels for the training data. For (iii), we find that using only the first five moments of both the interarrival and service times distribution as inputs is sufficient to train the neural net. Our empirical results show that our neural model can estimate the stationary behavior of the GI/GI/1—far exceeding other available methods in terms of both accuracy and runtimes. History: Ram Ramesh, Area Editor for Data Science and Machine Learning. Funding: O. Baron received financial support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NERC) [Grant 458051]. D. Krass received financial support from the NERC [Grant 458395]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0263) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0263). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Projecting a vector onto a simplex is a well-studied problem that arises in a wide range of optimization problems. Numerous algorithms have been proposed for determining the projection; however, the primary focus of the literature is on serial algorithms. We present a parallel method that decomposes the input vector and distributes it across multiple processors for local projection. Our method is especially effective when the resulting projection is highly sparse, which is the case, for instance, in large-scale problems with independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) entries. Moreover, the method can be adapted to parallelize a broad range of serial algorithms from the literature. We fill in theoretical gaps in serial algorithm analysis and develop similar results for our parallel analogues. Numerical experiments conducted on a wide range of large-scale instances, both real world and simulated, demonstrate the practical effectiveness of the method. History: Accepted by Antonio Frangioni, Area Editor for Design & Analysis of Algorithms—Continuous. Funding: This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research [Grant N00014-23-1-2632]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0328) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0328). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An algorithm for the two-stage robust optimization surgery-to-operating room allocation problem is presented. The second-stage problem is an integer linear program whose convex hull is approximated using three types of specialized valid inequalities and Chvátal-Gomory cuts. The resulting linear relaxation of the second-stage problem is then dualized and integrated into the first-stage problem. The resulting mixed integer linear program, which is an approximation of the original problem, is then solved using a commercial solver. If the solution of this model is not optimal for the second-stage problem, valid inequalities for the second-stage problem are generated, yielding a type of column-generation based approach that we refer to as the sequential follower refinement (SFR) algorithm. Data from an academic medical center are used to compare the computational performance of SFR with the constraint and column generation (C&CG) algorithm, which is the only exact approach that has been specifically applied for this problem in the literature. An extensive numerical study of SFR and its computational characteristics is presented that shows that SFR yields better-quality solutions compared with C&CG, even as the termination criterion of SFR is met much sooner, especially for problems involving higher number of surgeries. History: Accepted by Paul Brooks, Area Editor for Applications in Biology, Medicine, & Healthcare. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0191) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0191). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a bundle method for the unconstrained minimization of nonsmooth difference-of-convex (DC) functions, and it is based on the calculation of a special type of descent direction called descent–ascent direction. The algorithm only requires evaluations of the minuend component function at each iterate, and it can be considered as a parsimonious bundle method as accumulation of information takes place only in case the descent–ascent direction does not provide a sufficient decrease. No line search is performed, and proximity control is pursued independent of whether the decrease in the objective function is achieved. Termination of the algorithm at a point satisfying a weak criticality condition is proved, and numerical results on a set of benchmark DC problems are reported. History: Accepted by Antonio Frangioni, Area Editor for Design & Analysis of Algorithms – Continuous. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2023.0142) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2023.0142). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce DiffOpt.jl, a Julia library to differentiate through the solution of optimization problems with respect to arbitrary parameters present in the objective and/or constraints. The library builds upon MathOptInterface, thus leveraging the rich ecosystem of solvers and composing well with modeling languages like JuMP. DiffOpt offers both forward and reverse differentiation modes, enabling multiple use cases from hyperparameter optimization to backpropagation and sensitivity analysis, bridging constrained optimization with end-to-end differentiable programming. DiffOpt is built on two known rules for differentiating quadratic programming and conic programming standard forms. However, thanks to its ability to differentiate through model transformations, the user is not limited to these forms and can differentiate with respect to the parameters of any model that can be reformulated into these standard forms. This notably includes programs mixing affine conic constraints and convex quadratic constraints or objective function. History: Accepted by Ted Ralphs, Area Editor for Software Tools. Funding: The work of A. Sharma on DiffOpt.jl was funded by the Google Summer of Code program through NumFocus. M. Besançon was partially supported through the Research Campus Modal funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research [Grant 05M14ZAM, 05M20ZBM]. J. Dias Garcia was supported in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001. B. Legat was supported by a BAEF Postdoctoral Fellowship, the NSF [Grant OAC-1835443], and the ERC Adv. [Grant 885682]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0283), as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0283). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of community detection, correlation clustering (CC) provides a measure of balance for social networks as well as a tool to explore their structures. However, CC does not encompass features such as the mediation between the clusters, which could be all the more relevant with the recent rise of ideological polarization. In this work, we study correlation clustering under mediation (CCM), a new variant of CC in which a set of mediators is determined. This new signed graph clustering problem is proved to be NP-hard and formulated as an integer programming formulation. An extensive investigation of the mediation set structure leads to the development of two efficient exact enumeration algorithms for CCM. The first one exhaustively enumerates the maximal sets of mediators in order to provide several relevant solutions. The second algorithm implements a pruning mechanism, which drastically reduces the size of the exploration tree in order to return a single optimal solution. Computational experiments are presented on two sets of instances: signed networks representing voting activity in the European Parliament and random signed graphs. History: Accepted by Van Hentenryck, Area Editor for Pascal. Funding: This work was supported by Fondation Mathématique Jacques Hadamard [Grant P-2019-0031]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0129) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0129). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study two-stage stochastic optimization problems with random recourse, where the coefficients of the adaptive decisions involve uncertain parameters. To deal with the infinite-dimensional recourse decisions, we propose a scalable approximation scheme via piecewise linear and piecewise quadratic decision rules. We develop a data-driven distributionally robust framework with two layers of robustness to address distributional uncertainty. We also establish out-of-sample performance guarantees for the proposed scheme. Applying known ideas, the resulting optimization problem can be reformulated as an exact copositive program that admits semidefinite programming approximations. We design an iterative decomposition algorithm, which converges under some regularity conditions, to reduce the runtime needed to solve this program. Through numerical examples for various known operations management applications, we demonstrate that our method produces significantly better solutions than the traditional sample-average approximation scheme especially when the data are limited. For the problem instances for which only the recourse cost coefficients are random, our method exhibits slightly inferior out-of-sample performance but shorter runtimes compared with a competing approach. History: Accepted by Nicola Secomandi, Area Editor for Stochastic Models & Reinforcement Learning. Funding: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [Grants 2342505 and 2343869]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2021.0306) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2021.0306). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Program coverage customization selectively adds instrumentation to a compiled computer program so that a limited amount of directly observed data can be used to infer other program coverage information after a run. A good instrumentation plan can reduce run-time overheads while still giving software developers the information they need. Unfortunately, optimal coverage planning is NP-hard, limiting either the quality of heuristic plans or the sizes of programs that can be instrumented optimally. We exploit the monotonicity property of feasible instrumentations to formulate this problem as an intraprocedural set covering problem. Our formulation has an exponential number of constraints, and we design a polynomial-time separation algorithm to incrementally add the necessary subset of these inequalities. Our approach reduces expected run-time probing costs compared with existing methods, offers a guarantee of the optimality of the instrumentation, and has compilation-time overhead suitable for wide practical use. History: Accepted by Pascal Van Hentenryck, Area Editor for Computational Modeling: Methods & Analysis. Funding: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [Grants CCF-1318489, CCF-1420866, and CCF-1423237] and the Air Force Research Laboratory [Grant FA8750-14-2-0270]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2021.0349) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2021.0349). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study considers a well-known critical node detection problem that aims to minimize a pairwise connectivity measure of an undirected graph via the removal of a subset of nodes (referred to as critical nodes) subject to a cardinality constraint. Potential applications include epidemic control, emergency response, vulnerability assessment, carbon emission monitoring, network security, and drug design. To solve the problem, we present a "reduce-solve-combine" memetic search approach that integrates a problem reduction mechanism into the popular population-based memetic algorithm framework. At each generation, a common pattern mined from two parent solutions is first used to reduce the given problem instance, then the reduced instance is solved by a component-based hybrid neighborhood search that effectively combines an articulation point impact strategy and a node weighting strategy, and finally an offspring solution is produced by combining the mined common pattern and the solution of the reduced instance. Extensive evaluations on 42 real-world and synthetic benchmark instances show the efficacy of the proposed method, which discovers nine new upper bounds and significantly outperforms the current state-of-the-art algorithms. Investigation of key algorithmic modules additionally discloses the importance of the proposed ideas and strategies. Finally, we demonstrate the generality of the proposed method via its adaptation to solve the node-weighted critical node problem. History: Accepted by Erwin Pesch, Area Editor for Heuristic Search & Approximation Algorithms. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72371157, 61903144, 72031007]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0130) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0130). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Model calibration is challenging for large-scale system models with a great number of variables. Existing approaches to partitioning system models and prioritizing data acquisition rely on heuristics rather than formal treatments. The sensor placement problem in physical dynamic systems points to a promising avenue for formalizing data acquisition priorities, which addresses the following question for system models: With the model at hand and pre-existing data availability on a subset of model variables, what are the (next) k model variables that would bring the largest utility to model calibration, once their data are acquired? In this study, we formalize this problem as a combinatorial optimization and adapt two solutions, the information-entropy approach and the miss-probability approach, from physical dynamic systems to system models in management sciences. Next, based on the idea of the data availability partition, we develop a third solution. The new approach can be understood from the entropy perspective and is embedded in the theoretical framework for the evaluation of side information. Our solution applies to system models of all topologies: analytical results of the optimal placement are derived for binary/multinary trees; for general (directed) tree structures, an algorithm to determine the optimal placement is devised, whose complexity is upper-bounded by O(nlog2(n)) for an n-variable system; for arbitrary model topologies with the presence of loops, sequential-optimal and simulated-annealing schemes are formulated. Three approaches are compared on a validating example; our solution outperforms the two alternatives. Application on a multicompartment system demonstrates the toolkit's practical use. History: Accepted by Pascal Van Hentenryck, Area Editor for Computational Modeling: Methods & Analysis. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0128) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0128). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although most methods for solving mixed-integer optimization problems compute a single optimal solution, a diverse set of near-optimal solutions can often lead to improved outcomes. We present a new method for finding a set of diverse solutions by emphasizing diversity within the search for near-optimal solutions. Specifically, within a branch-and-bound framework, we investigated parameterized node selection rules that explicitly consider diversity. Our results indicate that our approach significantly increases the diversity of the final solution set. When compared with two existing methods, our method runs with similar runtime as regular node selection methods and gives a diversity improvement between 12% and 190%. In contrast, popular node selection rules, such as best-first search, in some instances performed worse than state-of-the-art methods by more than 35% and gave an improvement of no more than 130%. Furthermore, we find that our method is most effective when diversity in node selection is continuously emphasized after reaching a minimal depth in the tree and when the solution set has grown sufficiently large. Our method can be easily incorporated into integer programming solvers and has the potential to significantly increase the diversity of solution sets. History: Accepted by Pascal Van Hentenryck, Area Editor for Computational Modeling: Methods & Analysis. Funding: This work was supported by the Army Research Office [Grant W911NF-21-1-0079]. The views expressed in this study do not represent those of the U.S. Government, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. Army. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0164) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0164). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federated learning is a new distributed machine learning framework, where numerous heterogeneous clients collaboratively train a model without sharing training data. In this work, we consider a practical and ubiquitous issue when deploying federated learning in mobile environments: intermittent client availability, where the set of eligible clients may change during the training process. Such intermittent client availability would seriously deteriorate the performance of the classical federated averaging algorithm (FedAvg). Thus, we propose a simple distributed nonconvex optimization algorithm, called federated latest averaging (FedLaAvg), which leverages the latest gradients of all clients, even when the clients are not available, to jointly update the global model in each iteration. Our theoretical analysis shows that FedLaAvg achieves guaranteed convergence and a sublinear speedup with respect to the total number of clients. We implement FedLaAvg along with several baselines and evaluate them over the benchmarking MNIST and Sentiment140 data sets. The evaluation results demonstrate that FedLaAvg achieves more stable training than FedAvg in both convex and nonconvex settings and reaches a sublinear speedup. Source code and online supplement are available at the IJOC GitHub site (http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0057.cd, https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0057). History: Accepted by Ram Ramesh, Area Editor for Data Science & Machine Leaning. Funding: This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China [Grant 2022ZD0119100], the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [Grants 61972252, 61972254, 62072303, 62025204, 62132018, 62202296, and 62202297], the Alibaba Innovation Research (AIR) Program, and the Tencent Rhino Bird Key Research Project. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0057) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0057). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic capital (EC) is a risk measure used by financial firms to specify capital levels to protect (with high probability) against large unforeseen losses. Defined as the difference between an (extreme) quantile and the mean of the loss distribution, the EC is often estimated via Monte Carlo methods. Although simple random sampling (SRS) may be effective in estimating the mean, it can be inefficient for the extreme quantile in the EC. Applying importance sampling (IS) may lead to an efficient quantile estimator but can do poorly for the mean. Measure-specific IS (MSIS) instead uses IS to estimate only the quantile, and the mean is independently handled via SRS. We analyze large-sample properties of EC estimators obtained via SRS only, IS only, MSIS, IS using a defensive mixture, and a double estimator using both SRS and IS to estimate both the quantile and the mean, establishing Bahadur-type representations for the EC estimators and proving they obey central limit theorems. We provide asymptotic theory comparing the estimators when the loss is the sum of a large number of independent and identically distributed random variables. Numerical and simulation results, including for a large portfolio credit risk model with dependent obligors, complement the theory. History: Accepted by Bruno Tuffin, Area Editor for Simulation. Funding: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [Grant CMMI-1537322]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2021.0261) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2021.0261). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on software reliability growth models (SRGMs) has been extensively conducted for decades, and the models were often developed based on two assumptions: (1) once the errors are detected, they can be completely removed instantly, and (2) errors can be removed eternally, and the debugging tasks will not produce any new errors. However, both assumptions are unrealistic. This study proposes an SRGM that ignores these restricted assumptions by introducing a detection process that may remove an error after a period of time once it has been detected and by considering imperfect debugging, which indicates that new errors may emerge through corresponding debugging tasks. In addition, because software can be upgraded to respond on a timely basis to constantly changing consumer expectations and thus extend product life in the market, the proposed SRGM also considers software upgrades for the multiversion software, and a dynamic programming approach is used to effectively obtain the optimal release schedule with consideration of the constraint of budget. Real data sets are used to examine the effectiveness of the proposed model, and the fitting results show that the proposed model outperforms other existing models. The results of numerical validation indicate that the proposed dynamic programming method with information updating outperforms the sequential solution method in determining the optimal release time for each version. Moreover, decision makers should carefully evaluate the parameters because overestimating the parameters of the mean value functions will cause serious software risk due to excessively shortening the testing time. History: Accepted by Pascal Van Hentenryck, Area Editor for Computational Modeling: Methods & Analysis. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2021.0141) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2021.0141). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]