Mathematics

We study a problem in which a firm sets prices for products based on the transaction data, i.e., which product past customers chose from an assortment and what were the historical prices that they observed. Our approach does not impose a model on the distribution of the customers' valuations and only assumes, instead, that purchase choices satisfy incentive-compatible constraints. The individual valuation of each past customer can then be encoded as a polyhedral set, and our approach maximizes the worst-case revenue assuming that new customers' valuations are drawn from the empirical distribution implied by the collection of such polyhedra. We show that the optimal prices in this setting can be approximated at any arbitrary precision by solving a compact mixed-integer linear program. Moreover, we study special practical cases where the program can be solved efficiently, and design three approximation strategies that are of low computational complexity and interpretable. Comprehensive numerical studies based on synthetic and real data suggest that our pricing approach is uniquely beneficial when the historical data has a limited size or is susceptible to model misspecification.

A model-based signal processing framework is proposed for pandemic trend forecasting and control by using non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) at regional and country levels worldwide. The control objective is to prescribe quantifiable NPI strategies at different levels of stringency, which balance between human factors (such as new cases and death rates) and cost of intervention per region/country. Due to the significant differences in infrastructures and priorities of regions and countries, strategists are given the flexibility to weight between different NPIs, and to select the desired balance between the human factor and overall NPI cost. The proposed framework is based on a \textit{finite-horizon optimal control} (FHOC) formulation of the bi-objective problem and the FHOC is numerically solved by using an ad hoc \textit{extended Kalman filtering/smoothing} framework. The algorithm enables strategists to select the desired balance between the human factor and NPI cost with a set of weights and parameters. The parameters of the model, are partially selected by epidemiological facts from COVID-19 studies, and partially trained by using machine learning techniques. The developed algorithm is applied on real global data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker project, which has categorized and quantified the regional responses to the pandemic for more than 300 countries and regions worldwide, since January 2020. This dataset has been used for NPI-based prediction and prescription during the XPRIZE Pandemic Response Challenge. The source codes developed for the proposed method are provided online.

Vehicle Routing Problems are problems in which a set of customers is visited by a set of vehicles. In this work, we model a multiobjective benchmark on a 2D map based on a realistic routing problem of food deliveries by motorcycles in the city of Rio Claro-SP. The generated map of Rio Claro presents 1566 streets with manually extracted coordinates and modeled through polygonal chains. We generate a total of 23 instances containing 2 to 7 deposits and up to 2000 delivery points. This work is an extension of \cite{2020zeni} in which the authors model the problem of mail delivery by postmen in the city of Artur Nogueira. The research of Zeni et al. has one deposit, while in this work we have multiple deposits. In Zeni et al., the city of Artur Nogueira was modeled, with 537 streets. In this work, a map of Rio Claro is modeled, with 1566 streets.

The synthesis of control laws for interacting agent-based dynamics and their mean-field limit is studied. A linearization-based approach is used for the computation of sub-optimal feedback laws obtained from the solution of differential matrix Riccati equations. Quantification of dynamic performance of such control laws leads to theoretical estimates on suitable linearization points of the nonlinear dynamics. Subsequently, the feedback laws are embedded into nonlinear model predictive control framework where the control is updated adaptively in time according to dynamic information on moments of linear mean-field dynamics. The performance and robustness of the proposed methodology is assessed through different numerical experiments in collective dynamics.

The moment sum of squares (moment-SOS) hierarchy produces sequences of upper and lower bounds on functionals of the exit time solution of a polynomial stochastic differential equation with polynomial constraints, at the price of solving semidefinite optimization problems of increasing size. In this note we use standard results from elliptic partial differential equation analysis to prove convergence of the bounds produced by the hierarchy. We also use elementary convex analysis to describe a super- and sub-solution interpretation dual to a linear formulation on occupation measures. The practical relevance of the hierarchy is illustrated with numerical examples.

The augmented Lagrangian method (ALM) is one of the most useful methods for constrained optimization. Its convergence has been well established under convexity assumptions or smoothness assumptions, or under both assumptions. ALM may experience oscillations and divergence facing nonconvexity and nonsmoothness simultaneously. In this paper, we consider the linearly constrained problem with a nonconvex (in particular, weakly convex) and nonsmooth objective. We modify ALM using a Moreau envelope of the augmented Lagrangian and establish its convergence under conditions that are weaker than those in the literature. We call it the Moreau envelope augmented Lagrangian (MEAL) method. We also show that the iteration complexity of MEAL is o( ε ?? ) to yield an ε -accurate first-order stationary point. We establish its whole sequence convergence (regardless of the initial guess) and a rate when a Kurdyka-?ojasiewicz property is assumed. Moreover, when the subproblem of MEAL has no closed-form solution and is difficult to solve, we propose two practical variants of MEAL, an inexact version called iMEAL with an approximate proximal update, and a linearized version called LiMEAL for the constrained problem with a composite objective. Their convergence is also established.

The goal of motion tomography is to recover a description of a vector flow field using information on the trajectory of a sensing unit. In this paper, we develop a predictor corrector algorithm designed to recover vector flow fields from trajectory data with the use of occupation kernels developed by Rosenfeld et al.. Specifically, we use the occupation kernels as an adaptive basis; that is, the trajectories defining our occupation kernels are iteratively updated to improve the estimation on the next stage. Initial estimates are established, then under mild assumptions, such as relatively straight trajectories, convergence is proven using the Contraction Mapping Theorem. We then compare to the established method by Chang et al. by defining a set of error metrics. We found that for simulated data, which provides a ground truth, our method offers a marked improvement and that for a real-world example we have similar results to the established method.

Data assimilation is a Bayesian inference process that obtains an enhanced understanding of a physical system of interest by fusing information from an inexact physics-based model, and from noisy sparse observations of reality. The multifidelity ensemble Kalman filter (MFEnKF) recently developed by the authors combines a full-order physical model and a hierarchy of reduced order surrogate models in order to increase the computational efficiency of data assimilation. The standard MFEnKF uses linear couplings between models, and is statistically optimal in case of Gaussian probability densities. This work extends MFEnKF to work with non-linear couplings between the models. Optimal nonlinear projection and interpolation operators are obtained by appropriately trained physics-informed autoencoders, and this approach allows to construct reduced order surrogate models with less error than conventional linear methods. Numerical experiments with the canonical Lorenz '96 model illustrate that nonlinear surrogates perform better than linear projection-based ones in the context of multifidelity filtering.

In this paper we develop an optimisation based approach to multivariate Chebyshev approximation on a finite grid. We consider two models: multivariate polynomial approximation and multivariate generalised rational approximation. In the second case the approximations are ratios of linear forms and the basis functions are not limited to monomials. It is already known that in the case of multivariate polynomial approximation on a finite grid the corresponding optimisation problems can be reduced to solving a linear programming problem, while the area of multivariate rational approximation is not so well this http URL this paper we demonstrate that in the case of multivariate generalised rational approximation the corresponding optimisation problems are quasiconvex. This statement remains true even when the basis functions are not limited to monomials. Then we apply a bisection method, which is a general method for quasiconvex optimisation. This method converges to an optimal solution with given precision. We demonstrate that the convex feasibility problems appearing in the bisection method can be solved using linear programming. Finally, we compare the deviation error and computational time for multivariate polynomial and generalised rational approximation with the same number of decision variables.

In this article, we derive first-order necessary optimality conditions for a constrained optimal control problem formulated in the Wasserstein space of probability measures. To this end, we introduce a new notion of localised metric subdifferential for compactly supported probability measures, and investigate the intrinsic linearised Cauchy problems associated to non-local continuity equations. In particular, we show that when the velocity perturbations belong to the tangent cone to the convexification of the set of admissible velocities, the solutions of these linearised problems are tangent to the solution set of the corresponding continuity inclusion. We then make use of these novel concepts to provide a synthetic and geometric proof of the celebrated Pontryagin Maximum Principle for an optimal control problem with inequality final-point constraints. In addition, we propose sufficient conditions ensuring the normality of the maximum principle.