I have the following objective function
minimize 1000 + 3*max(0, x-10)
How do I reformulate this into a linear program?
Introduce new variable y:
Post:
y >= 0
y >= x-10
Adapt Objective:
minimize 1000 + 3 * y
Related
I'm struggling a bit finding a fast algorithm that's suitable.
I just want to minimize:
norm2(x-s)
st
G.x <= h
x >= 0
sum(x) = R
G is sparse and contains only 1s (and zeros obviously).
In the case of iterative algorithms, it would be nice to get the interim solutions to show to the user.
The context is that s is a vector of current results, and the user is saying "well the sum of these few entries (entries indicated by a few 1.0's in a row in G) should be less than this value (a row in h). So we have to remove quantities from the entries the user specified (indicated by 1.0 entries in G) in a least-squares optimal way, but since we have a global constraint on the total (R) the values removed need to be allocated in a least-squares optimal way amongst the other entries. The entries can't go negative.
All the algorithms I'm looking at are much more general, and as a result are much more complex. Also, they seem quite slow. I don't see this as a complex problem, although mixes of equality and inequality constraints always seem to make things more complex.
This has to be called from Python, so I'm looking at Python libraries like qpsolvers and scipy.optimize. But I suppose Java or C++ libraries could be used and called from Python, which might be good since multithreading is better in Java and C++.
Any thoughts on what library/package/approach to use to best solve this problem?
The size of the problem is about 150,000 rows in s, and a few dozen rows in G.
Thanks!
Your problem is a linear least squares:
minimize_x norm2(x-s)
such that G x <= h
x >= 0
1^T x = R
Thus it fits the bill of the solve_ls function in qpsolvers.
Here is an instance of how I imagine your problem matrices would look like, given what you specified. Since it is sparse we should use SciPy CSC matrices, and regular NumPy arrays for vectors:
import numpy as np
import scipy.sparse as spa
n = 150_000
# minimize 1/2 || x - s ||^2
R = spa.eye(n, format="csc")
s = np.array(range(n), dtype=float)
# such that G * x <= h
G = spa.diags(
diagonals=[
[1.0 if i % 2 == 0 else 0.0 for i in range(n)],
[1.0 if i % 3 == 0 else 0.0 for i in range(n - 1)],
[1.0 if i % 5 == 0 else 0.0 for i in range(n - 1)],
],
offsets=[0, 1, -1],
)
a_dozen_rows = np.linspace(0, n - 1, 12, dtype=int)
G = G[a_dozen_rows]
h = np.ones(12)
# such that sum(x) == 42
A = spa.csc_matrix(np.ones((1, n)))
b = np.array([42.0]).reshape((1,))
# such that x >= 0
lb = np.zeros(n)
Next, we can solve this problem with:
from qpsolvers import solve_ls
x = solve_ls(R, s, G, h, A, b, lb, solver="osqp", verbose=True)
Here I picked CVXOPT but there are other open-source solvers you can install such as ProxQP, OSQP or SCS. You can install a set of open-source solvers by: pip install qpsolvers[open_source_solvers]. After some solvers are installed, you can list those for sparse matrices by:
print(qpsolvers.sparse_solvers)
Finally, here is some code to check that the solution returned by the solver satisfies our constraints:
tol = 1e-6 # tolerance for checks
print(f"- Objective: {0.5 * (x - s).dot(x - s):.1f}")
print(f"- G * x <= h: {(G.dot(x) <= h + tol).all()}")
print(f"- x >= 0: {(x + tol >= 0.0).all()}")
print(f"- sum(x) = {x.sum():.1f}")
I just tried it with OSQP (adding the eps_rel=1e-5 keyword argument when calling solve_ls, otherwise the returned solution would be less accurate than the tol = 1e-6 tolerance) and it found a solution is 737 milliseconds on my (rather old) CPU with:
- Objective: 562494373088866.8
- G * x <= h: True
- x >= 0: True
- sum(x) = 42.0
Hoping this helps. Happy solving!
These are the conditions:
if(x > 0)
{
y >= a;
z <= b;
}
It is quite easy to convert the conditions into Linear Programming constraints if x were binary variable. But I am not finding a way to do this.
You can do this in 2 steps
Step 1: Introduce a binary dummy variable
Since x is continuous, we can introduce a binary 0/1 dummy variable. Let's call it x_positive
if x>0 then we want x_positive =1. We can achieve that via the following constraint, where M is a very large number.
x < x_positive * M
Note that this forces x_positive to become 1, if x is itself positive. If x is negative, x_positive can be anything. (We can force it to be zero by adding it to the objective function with a tiny penalty of the appropriate sign.)
Step 2: Use the dummy variable to implement the next 2 constraints
In English: if x_positive = 1, then y >= a
However, if x_positive = 0, y can be anything (y > -inf)
y > a - M (1 - x_positive)
Similarly,
if x_positive = 1, then z <= b
z <= b + M * (1 - x_positive)
Both the linear constraints above will kick in if x>0 and will be trivially satisfied if x <=0.
I am trying to graph two functions, but i want to graph one function for a condition but graph using another function if another condition is met.
A simple example would be:
if x > 0
then sin(x)
else cos(x)
It would then graph cos and sin depending on the x value, there being an obvious gap at x = 0, as cos(0) = 1 and sin(0) = 0.
EDIT: There is a built-in way. I'll leave my original answer below for posterity, but try using the piecewise() function:
plot(piecewise(((cos(x),x<0), (sin(x), 0<x))))
See it here.
I would guess that there's a built-in way to do this, but I don't know it. You can multiply your functions by the Heaviside Step Function to accomplish this task. The step function is 1 if x > 0 and 0 if x < 0, so multiplying this into your functions and then summing them together will select only one of them based on the sign of x, that is to say:
f(x) := heaviside(x) * sin(x) + heaviside(-x) * cos(x)
If x > 0, heaviside(x) = 1 and heaviside(-x) = 0, so f(x) = sin(x).
If x < 0, heaviside(x) = 0 and heaviside(-x) = 1, so f(x) = cos(x).
See it in action here. In general, note that if you want the transition to be at x = a, then you could do heaviside(x-a) and heaviside(-x+a), respectively. If you want N functions, you'll have to have (N-1) multiplied step functions on each term, each with their own (x-a_i) argument. I hope someone else can contribute a cleaner solution.
How do I use Excel VBA to find the minimum value of an equation?
For example, if I have the equation y = 2x^2 + 14, and I want to make a loop that will slowly increase/decrease the value of x until it can find the smallest value possible for y, and then let me know what the corresponding value of x is, how would I go about doing that?
Is there a method that would work for much more complicated equations?
Thank you for your help!
Edit: more details
I'm trying to design a program that will find a certain constant needed to graph a nuclear decay. This constant is a part of an equation that gets me a calculated decay. I'm comparing this calculated decay against a measured decay. However, the constant changes very slightly as the decay happens, which means I have to use something called a residual-square to find the best constant to use that will fit the entire decay best to make my calculated decay as accurate as possible.
It works by doing (Measured Decay - Calculated Decay) ^2
You do that for the decay at several times, and add them all up. What I need my program to do is to slowly increase and decrease this constant until I can find a minimum value for the value I get when I add up the residual-squared results for all the times using this decay. The residual-squared that has the smallest value has the value of the constant that I want.
I already drafted a program that does all the calculations and such. I'm just not sure how to find this minimum value. I'm sure if a method works for something like y = x^2 + 1, I can adapt it to work for my needs.
Test the output while looping to look for the smallest output result.
Here's an Example:
Sub FormulaLoop()
Dim x As Double
Dim y As Double
Dim yBest As Double
x = 1
y = (x ^ 2) + 14
yBest = y
For x = 2 To 100
y = (x ^ 2) + 14
If y < yBest Then
yBest = y
End If
Next x
MsgBox "The smallest output of y was: " & yBest
End Sub
If you want to loop through all the possibilities of two variables that make up x then I'd recommend looping in this format:
Sub FormulaLoop_v2()
Dim MeasuredDecay As Double
Dim CalculatedDecay As Double
Dim y As Double
Dim yBest As Double
MeasuredDecay = 1
CalculatedDecay = 1
y = ((MeasuredDecay - CalculatedDecay) ^ 2) + 14
yBest = y
For MeasuredDecay = 2 To 100
For CalculatedDecay = 2 To 100
y = ((MeasuredDecay - CalculatedDecay) ^ 2) + 14
If y < yBest Then
yBest = y
End If
Next CalculatedDecay
Next MeasuredDecay
MsgBox "The smallest output of y was: " & yBest
End Sub
I'm trying to build a simple program to price call options using the black scholes formula http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes. I'm trying to figure our the best way to get probabilities from a normal distribution. For example if I were to do this by hand and I got the value of as d1=0.43 than I'd look up 0.43 in this table http://www.math.unb.ca/~knight/utility/NormTble.htm and get the value 0.6664.
I believe that there are no functions in c or objective-c to find the normal distribution. I'm also thinking about creating a 2 dimensional array and looping through until I find the desired value. Or maybe I can define 300 doubles with the corresponding value and loop through those until I get the appropriate result. Any thoughts on the best approach?
You need to define what it is you are looking for more clearly. Based on what you posted, it appears you are looking for the cumulative distribution function or P(d < d1) where d1 is measured in standard deviations and d is a normal distribution: by your example, if d1 = 0.43 then P(d < d1) = 0.6664.
The function you want is called the error function erf(x) and there are some good approximations for it.
Apparently erf(x) is part of the standard math.h in C. (not sure about objective-c but I assume it probably contains it as well).
But erf(x) is not exactly the function you need. The general form P(d < d1) can be calculated from erf(x) in the following formula:
P(d<d1) = f(d1,sigma) = (erf(x/sigma/sqrt(2))+1)/2
where sigma is the standard deviation. (in your case you can use sigma = 1.)
You can test this on Wolfram Alpha for example: f(0.43,1) = (erf(0.43/sqrt(2))+1)/2 = 0.666402 which matches your table.
There are two other things that are important:
If you are looking for P(d < d1) where d1 is large (greater in absolute value than about 3.0 * sigma) then you should really be using the complementary error function erfc(x) = 1-erf(x) which tells you how close P(d < d1) is to 0 or 1 without running into numerical errors. For d1 < -3*sigma, P(d < d1) = (erf(d1/sigma/sqrt(2))+1)/2 = erfc(-d1/sigma/sqrt(2))/2, and for d1 > 3*sigma, P(d < d1) = (erf(d1/sigma/sqrt(2))+1)/2 = 1 - erfc(d1/sigma/sqrt(2))/2 -- but don't actually compute that; instead leave it as 1 - K where K = erfc(d1/sigma/sqrt(2))/2. For example, if d1 = 5*sigma, then P(d < d1) = 1 - 2.866516*10-7
If for example your programming environment doesn't have erf(x) built into the available libraries, you need a good approximation. (I thought I had an easy one to use but I can't find it and I think it was actually for the inverse error function). I found this 1969 article by W. J. Cody which gives a good approximation for erf(x) if |x| < 0.5, and it's better to use erf(x) = 1 - erfc(x) for |x| > 0.5. For example, let's say you want erf(0.2) ≈ 0.2227025892105 from Wolfram Alpha; Cody says evaluate with x * R(x2) where R is a rational function you can get from his table.
If I try this in Javascript (coefficients from Table II of the Cody paper):
// use only for |x| <= 0.5
function erf1(x)
{
var y = x*x;
return x*(3.6767877 - 9.7970565e-2*y)/(3.2584593 + y);
}
then I get erf1(0.2) = 0.22270208866303123 which is pretty close, for a 1st-order rational function. Cody gives tables of coefficients for rational functions up to degree 4; here's degree 2:
// use only for |x| <= 0.5
function erf2(x)
{
var y = x*x;
return x*(21.3853322378 + 1.72227577039*y + 0.316652890658*y*y)
/ (18.9522572415 + 7.8437457083*y + y*y);
}
which gives you erf2(0.2) = 0.22270258922638206 which is correct out to 10 decimal places. The Cody paper also gives you similar formulas for erfc(x) where |x| is between 0.5 and 4.0, and a third formula for erfc(x) where |x| > 4.0, and you can check your results with Wolfram Alpha or known erfc(x) tables for accuracy if you like.
Hope this helps!