Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 1807.05538

The method of codifferential descent for convex and global piecewise affine optimization

M. V. Dolgopolik
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

The class of nonsmooth codifferentiable functions was introduced by professor V.F.~Demyanov in the late 1980s. He also proposed a method for minimizing these functions called the method of codifferential descent (MCD). However, until now almost no theoretical results on the performance of this method on particular classes of nonsmooth optimization problems were known. In the first part of the paper, we study the performance of the method of codifferential descent on a class of nonsmooth convex functions satisfying some regularity assumptions, which in the smooth case are reduced to the Lipschitz continuity of the gradient. We prove that in this case the MCD has the iteration complexity bound $\mathcal{O}(1 / \varepsilon)$. In the second part of the paper we obtain new global optimality conditions for piecewise affine functions in terms of codifferentials. With the use of these conditions we propose a modification of the MCD for minimizing piecewise affine functions (called the method of global codifferential descent) that does not use line search, and discards those "pieces" of the objective functions that are no longer useful for the optimization process. Then we prove that the MCD as well as its modification proposed in the article find a point of global minimum of a nonconvex piecewise affine function in a finite number of steps.

Explore related subjects

math.OC

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

M. V. Dolgopolik. 2023-03-29. The method of codifferential descent for convex and global piecewise affine optimization. https://doi.org/10.1080/10556788.2019.1571590

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Dynamic Programming-Compatible Uncertainty Sets in Robust Markov Decision Processes

In this paper, we investigate the compatibility of robust Markov Decision Processes (RMDPs) with dynamic programming under various assumptions on the uncertainty set, i.e., we investigate when one can solve an RMDP by solving a fixed point equation. We show that in all generality, s-rectangular and sa-rectangular uncertainty sets are the only models of uncertainty that are compatible with dynamic programming. Our analysis shows that existing non-rectangular models, including r-rectangularity, are only weakly compatible with dynamic programming, as they require the assumption that rewards do not depend on the next state. In this case, our results imply that one can always construct a rectangular uncertainty set that is equivalent, for both policy evaluation and optimization, to the dynamic programming-compatible non-rectangular model. This highlights a key limitation: dynamic-programming-compatible non-rectangular uncertainty sets, although practically relevant for uncertainty quantification, do not provide a genuinely distinct assessment of policy performance. Interestingly, our proof techniques rely on identifying a novel simultaneous solvability property, which we show is central to several important properties of RMDPs, including the existence of stationary optimal policies and dynamic programming-based formulations. The simultaneous solvability property enables a unified approach to studying all existing models of uncertainty, rectangular and non-rectangular alike.

math.OC↗
arXiv2026

A simple and practical adaptive trust-region method

We present an adaptive trust-region method for unconstrained optimization that allows inexact solutions to the trust-region subproblems. Our method is a simple variant of the classical trust-region method of Ssorensen. The method achieves the best possible convergence bound up to an additive logarithmic term for finding an $ε$-approximate stationary point, i.e., $O( Δ_f L^{1/2} ε^{-3/2}) + \tilde{O}(1)$ iterations, where $L$ is the Lipschitz constant of the Hessian, $Δ_f$ is the optimality gap, and $ε$ is the termination tolerance for the gradient norm. This improves over existing trust-region methods whose worst-case bound is at least a factor of $L$ worse. We compare our performance with state-of-the-art trust-region (TRU) and cubic regularization (ARC) methods from the GALAHAD library on the CUTEst benchmark problems with at least 100 variables. We also compare with the recently developed Universal trust-region (UTR) method, using the same subproblem solver. In terms of shifted geometric mean of wall-clock times our method's is between $1.2\times$ and $2\times$ faster. We report similar improvements for number of function evaluations, factorizations, gradient evaluations and Hessian evaluations. Compared to the conference version of this paper, our revised method includes several practical enhancements. These modifications dramatically improved performance, including almost an order of magnitude reduction in the shifted geometric mean of wall-clock times. We also show that it suffices for the function to be continuously twice-differentiable to guarantee that either the minimum gradient norm converges to zero or the objective value tends towards negative infinity, even when the iterates diverge.

math.OC↗
arXiv2026

Rough Stochastic Pontryagin Maximum Principle and an Indirect Shooting Method

We derive first-order Pontryagin optimality conditions for stochastic optimal control with deterministic controls for systems modeled by rough differential equations (RDE) driven by Gaussian rough paths. This Pontryagin Maximum Principle (PMP) applies to systems following stochastic differential equations (SDE) driven by Brownian motion, yet it does not rely on forward-backward SDEs and involves the same Hamiltonian as the deterministic PMP. The proof consists of first deriving various integrable error bounds for solutions to nonlinear and linear RDEs by leveraging recent results on Gaussian rough paths. The PMP then follows using standard techniques based on needle-like variations. As an application, we propose the first indirect shooting method for nonlinear stochastic optimal control and show that it converges 10x faster than a direct method on a stabilization task.

math.OC↗