In this article, we address a class of non convex, integer, non linear mathematical programs using dynamic programming. The mathematical program considered, whose properties are studied in this article, may be used to model the optimal liquidation problem of a single asset portfolio, held in a very large quantity, in a low volatility and perfect memory market, with few market participants. In this context, the Portfolio Manager's selling actions convey information to market participants, which in turn lower bid prices and further penalize the liquidation proceeds we attempt to maximize. We show the problem can be solved exactly using Dynamic Programming (DP) in polynomial time. However, exact resolution is only efficient for small instances. For medium size and large instances, we introduce dedicated heuristics which provide thin admissible solutions, hence tight lower bounds for the initial problem. We also benchmark them against a commercial solver, such as LocalSolver [7]. We are also interested in the continuously relaxed problem, which is non convex. Firstly, we use continuous solutions, obtained by free solver NLopt [26] and transform them into thin admissible solutions of the discrete problem. Secondly, we provide, under some convexity assumptions, an upper bound for the continuous relaxation, and hence for the initial (integer) problem. Numerical experiments confirm the quality of proposed heuristics (lower bounds), which often reach the optimal, or prove very tight, for small and medium size instances, with a very fast CPU time. Our upper bound, however, is not tight.
We study reinforcement learning for two-player zero-sum Markov games with simultaneous moves in the finite-horizon setting, where the transition kernel of the underlying Markov games can be parameterized by a linear function over the current state, both players' actions and the next state. In particular, we assume that we can control both players and aim to find the Nash Equilibrium by minimizing the duality gap. We propose an algorithm Nash-UCRL based on the principle "Optimism-in-Face-of-Uncertainty". Our algorithm only needs to find a Coarse Correlated Equilibrium (CCE), which is computationally efficient. Specifically, we show that Nash-UCRL can provably achieve an $\tilde{O}(dH\sqrt{T})$ regret, where $d$ is the linear function dimension, $H$ is the length of the game and $T$ is the total number of steps in the game. To assess the optimality of our algorithm, we also prove an $\tilde{\Omega}( dH\sqrt{T})$ lower bound on the regret. Our upper bound matches the lower bound up to logarithmic factors, which suggests the optimality of our algorithm.
The monotone variational inequality is a central problem in mathematical programming that unifies and generalizes many important settings such as smooth convex optimization, two-player zero-sum games, convex-concave saddle point problems, etc. The extragradient method by Korpelevich [1976] is one of the most popular methods for solving monotone variational inequalities. Despite its long history and intensive attention from the optimization and machine learning community, the following major problem remains open. What is the last-iterate convergence rate of the extragradient method for monotone and Lipschitz variational inequalities with constraints? We resolve this open problem by showing a tight $O\left(\frac{1}{\sqrt{T}}\right)$ last-iterate convergence rate for arbitrary convex feasible sets, which matches the lower bound by Golowich et al. [2020]. Our rate is measured in terms of the standard gap function. The technical core of our result is the monotonicity of a new performance measure -- the tangent residual, which can be viewed as an adaptation of the norm of the operator that takes the local constraints into account. To establish the monotonicity, we develop a new approach that combines the power of the sum-of-squares programming with the low dimensionality of the update rule of the extragradient method. We believe our approach has many additional applications in the analysis of iterative methods.
In this paper we get error bounds for fully discrete approximations of infinite horizon problems via the dynamic programming approach. It is well known that considering a time discretization with a positive step size $h$ an error bound of size $h$ can be proved for the difference between the value function (viscosity solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation corresponding to the infinite horizon) and the value function of the discrete time problem. However, including also a spatial discretization based on elements of size $k$ an error bound of size $O(k/h)$ can be found in the literature for the error between the value functions of the continuous problem and the fully discrete problem. In this paper we revise the error bound of the fully discrete method and prove, under similar assumptions to those of the time discrete case, that the error of the fully discrete case is in fact $O(h+k)$ which gives first order in time and space for the method. This error bound matches the numerical experiments of many papers in the literature in which the behaviour $1/h$ from the bound $O(k/h)$ have not been observed.
Given a set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane, the $k$-center problem is to find $k$ congruent disks of minimum possible radius such that their union covers all the points in $P$. The $2$-center problem is a special case of the $k$-center problem that has been extensively studied in the recent past \cite{CAHN,HT,SH}. In this paper, we consider a generalized version of the $2$-center problem called \textit{proximity connected} $2$-center (PCTC) problem. In this problem, we are also given a parameter $\delta\geq 0$ and we have the additional constraint that the distance between the centers of the disks should be at most $\delta$. Note that when $\delta=0$, the PCTC problem is reduced to the $1$-center(minimum enclosing disk) problem and when $\delta$ tends to infinity, it is reduced to the $2$-center problem. The PCTC problem first appeared in the context of wireless networks in 1992 \cite{ACN0}, but obtaining a nontrivial deterministic algorithm for the problem remained open. In this paper, we resolve this open problem by providing a deterministic $O(n^2\log n)$ time algorithm for the problem.
In a sports competition, a team might lose a powerful incentive to exert full effort if its final rank does not depend on the outcome of the matches still to be played. Therefore, the organiser should reduce the probability of such a situation to the extent possible. Our paper provides a classification scheme to identify these weakly (where one team is indifferent) or strongly (where both teams are indifferent) stakeless games. A statistical model is estimated to simulate the UEFA Champions League groups and compare the candidate schedules used in the 2021/22 season according to the competitiveness of the matches played in the last round(s). The option followed in four of the eight groups is found to be optimal under a wide set of parameters. Minimising the number of strongly stakeless matches is verified to be a likely goal in the computer draw of the fixture that remains hidden from the public.
Reinforcement Learning (RL) approaches are lately deployed for orchestrating wireless communications empowered by Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs), leveraging their online optimization capabilities. Most commonly, in RL-based formulations for realistic RISs with low resolution phase-tunable elements, each configuration is modeled as a distinct reflection action, resulting to inefficient exploration due to the exponential nature of the search space. In this paper, we consider RISs with 1-bit phase resolution elements, and model the action of each of them as a binary vector including the feasible reflection coefficients. We then introduce two variations of the well-established Deep Q-Network (DQN) and Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) agents, aiming for effective exploration of the binary action spaces. For the case of DQN, we make use of an efficient approximation of the Q-function, whereas a discretization post-processing step is applied to the output of DDPG. Our simulation results showcase that the proposed techniques greatly outperform the baseline in terms of the rate maximization objective, when large-scale RISs are considered. In addition, when dealing with moderate scale RIS sizes, where the conventional DQN based on configuration-based action spaces is feasible, the performance of the latter technique is similar to the proposed learning approach.
Existing inferential methods for small area data involve a trade-off between maintaining area-level frequentist coverage rates and improving inferential precision via the incorporation of indirect information. In this article, we propose a method to obtain an area-level prediction region for a future observation which mitigates this trade-off. The proposed method takes a conformal prediction approach in which the conformity measure is the posterior predictive density of a working model that incorporates indirect information. The resulting prediction region has guaranteed frequentist coverage regardless of the working model, and, if the working model assumptions are accurate, the region has minimum expected volume compared to other regions with the same coverage rate. When constructed under a normal working model, we prove such a prediction region is an interval and construct an efficient algorithm to obtain the exact interval. We illustrate the performance of our method through simulation studies and an application to EPA radon survey data.
Computing a dense subgraph is a fundamental problem in graph mining, with a diverse set of applications ranging from electronic commerce to community detection in social networks. In many of these applications, the underlying context is better modelled as a weighted hypergraph that keeps evolving with time. This motivates the problem of maintaining the densest subhypergraph of a weighted hypergraph in a {\em dynamic setting}, where the input keeps changing via a sequence of updates (hyperedge insertions/deletions). Previously, the only known algorithm for this problem was due to Hu et al. [HWC17]. This algorithm worked only on unweighted hypergraphs, and had an approximation ratio of $(1+\epsilon)r^2$ and an update time of $O(\text{poly} (r, \log n))$, where $r$ denotes the maximum rank of the input across all the updates. We obtain a new algorithm for this problem, which works even when the input hypergraph is weighted. Our algorithm has a significantly improved (near-optimal) approximation ratio of $(1+\epsilon)$ that is independent of $r$, and a similar update time of $O(\text{poly} (r, \log n))$. It is the first $(1+\epsilon)$-approximation algorithm even for the special case of weighted simple graphs. To complement our theoretical analysis, we perform experiments with our dynamic algorithm on large-scale, real-world data-sets. Our algorithm significantly outperforms the state of the art [HWC17] both in terms of accuracy and efficiency.
The Monge-Amp\`ere equation is a fully nonlinear partial differential equation (PDE) of fundamental importance in analysis, geometry and in the applied sciences. In this paper we solve the Dirichlet problem associated with the Monge-Amp\`ere equation using neural networks and we show that an ansatz using deep input convex neural networks can be used to find the unique convex solution. As part of our analysis we study the effect of singularities, discontinuities and noise in the source function, we consider nontrivial domains, and we investigate how the method performs in higher dimensions. We also compare this method to an alternative approach in which standard feed-forward networks are used together with a loss function which penalizes lack of convexity.
Holonomic functions play an essential role in Computer Algebra since they allow the application of many symbolic algorithms. Among all algorithmic attempts to find formulas for power series, the holonomic property remains the most important requirement to be satisfied by the function under consideration. The targeted functions mainly summarize that of meromorphic functions. However, expressions like $\tan(z)$, $z/(\exp(z)-1)$, $\sec(z)$, etc., particularly, reciprocals, quotients and compositions of holonomic functions, are generally not holonomic. Therefore their power series are inaccessible by the holonomic framework. From the mathematical dictionaries, one can observe that most of the known closed-form formulas of non-holonomic power series involve another sequence whose evaluation depends on some finite summations. In the case of $\tan(z)$ and $\sec(z)$ the corresponding sequences are the Bernoulli and Euler numbers, respectively. Thus providing a symbolic approach that yields complete representations when linear summations for power series coefficients of non-holonomic functions appear, might be seen as a step forward towards the representation of non-holonomic power series. By adapting the method of ansatz with undetermined coefficients, we build an algorithm that computes least-order quadratic differential equations with polynomial coefficients for a large class of non-holonomic functions. A differential equation resulting from this procedure is converted into a recurrence equation by applying the Cauchy product formula and rewriting powers into polynomials and derivatives into shifts. Finally, using enough initial values we are able to give normal form representations to characterize several non-holonomic power series and prove non-trivial identities. We discuss this algorithm and its implementation for Maple 2022.