Numerical Optimization presents a comprehensive and up-to-date description of the most effective methods in continuous optimization. It responds to the growing interest in optimization in engineering, science, and business by focusing on the methods that are best suited to practical problems. For this new edition the book has been thoroughly updated throughout. There are new chapters on nonlinear interior methods and derivative-free methods for optimization, both of which are used widely in practice and the focus of much current research. Because of the emphasis on practical methods, as well as the extensive illustrations and exercises, the book is accessible to a wide audience. It can be used as a graduate text in engineering, operations research, mathematics, computer science, and business. It also serves as a handbook for researchers and practitioners in the field. The authors have strived to produce a text that is pleasant to read, informative, and rigorous - one that reveals both the beautiful nature of the discipline and its practical side.

Numerical Optimization

The goal of this article is to review the state-of-the-art tracking methods, classify them into different categories, and identify new trends. Object tracking, in general, is a challenging problem. Difficulties in tracking objects can arise due to abrupt object motion, changing appearance patterns of both the object and the scene, nonrigid object structures, object-to-object and object-to-scene occlusions, and camera motion. Tracking is usually performed in the context of higher-level applications that require the location and/or shape of the object in every frame. Typically, assumptions are made to constrain the tracking problem in the context of a particular application. In this survey, we categorize the tracking methods on the basis of the object and motion representations used, provide detailed descriptions of representative methods in each category, and examine their pros and cons. Moreover, we discuss the important issues related to tracking including the use of appropriate image features, selection of motion models, and detection of objects.

/pdf/object-tracking-a-survey-3706dclxb5.pdf

Object tracking: A survey

Single-particle electron cryomicroscopy (cryo-EM) is a powerful method for determining the structures of biological macromolecules. With automated microscopes, cryo-EM data can often be obtained in a few days. However, processing cryo-EM image data to reveal heterogeneity in the protein structure and to refine 3D maps to high resolution frequently becomes a severe bottleneck, requiring expert intervention, prior structural knowledge, and weeks of calculations on expensive computer clusters. Here we show that stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and branch-and-bound maximum likelihood optimization algorithms permit the major steps in cryo-EM structure determination to be performed in hours or minutes on an inexpensive desktop computer. Furthermore, SGD with Bayesian marginalization allows ab initio 3D classification, enabling automated analysis and discovery of unexpected structures without bias from a reference map. These algorithms are combined in a user-friendly computer program named cryoSPARC (http://www.cryosparc.com).

cryoSPARC: algorithms for rapid unsupervised cryo-EM structure determination

https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~rail/files/ArgallEtAlRAS09.pdf

A survey of robot learning from demonstration

https://www.physics.rutgers.edu/grad/690/Padmanabhan-2003.pdf

Cosmological constant—the weight of the vacuum

On K Δ

In continuous variable, smooth, nonconvex nonlinear programming, we analyze the complexity of checking whether(a)a given feasible solution is not a local minimum, and(b)the objective function is not bounded below on the set of feasible solutions.

We construct a special class of indefinite quadratic programs, with simple constraints and integer data, and show that checking (a) or (b) on this class is NP-complete. As a corollary, we show that checking whether a given integer square matrix is not copositive, is NP-complete.

/pdf/some-np-complete-problems-in-quadratic-and-nonlinear-3skjnc9tqf.pdf

Some NP-complete problems in quadratic and nonlinear programming

Linear complementarity, linear and nonlinear programming

A “branch and bound” algorithm is presented for solving the traveling salesman problem. The set of all tours feasible solutions is broken up into increasingly small subsets by a procedure called branching. For each subset a lower bound on the length of the tours therein is calculated. Eventually, a subset is found that contains a single tour whose length is less than or equal to some lower bound for every tour. The motivation of the branching and the calculation of the lower bounds are based on ideas frequently used in solving assignment problems. Computationally, the algorithm extends the size of problem that can reasonably be solved without using methods special to the particular problem.

An Algorithm for the Traveling Salesman Problem

The Hungarian method gives an efficient algorithm for finding the minimal cost assignment. However, in some cases it may be useful to determine the second minimal assignment (i.e., the best assignment after excluding the minimal cost assignment) and in general the kth minimal assignment for k = 1, 2, …. These things can easily be determined if all the assignments can be arranged as a sequence in increasing order of cost. This paper describes an efficient algorithm for such a ranking of all the assignments. The maximum computational effort required to generate an additional assignment in the sequence is that of solving at most (n − 1) different assignment problems, one each of sizes 2, 3, …, n.

Katta G. Murty

Papers

On K Δ

Some NP-complete problems in quadratic and nonlinear programming

Linear complementarity, linear and nonlinear programming

An Algorithm for the Traveling Salesman Problem

Letter to the Editor—An Algorithm for Ranking all the Assignments in Order of Increasing Cost