I have a minimization problem where I don't get optimal solution through MIP. I am wondering how to fix my problem. It might have been stuck in local minimum.What can I do?
I have also considered to change the tolerenance. How do I change the tolerance?
Solve MyMode Minimizing y using MIP
*Not getting optimal solution
You can use optcr=0 option to force gams finding the global optimal solution
additionally, you can give it a better initial solution using x.l=5 (for example)
Related
I would like to use Mosek to solve the following problem:
The constraint is convex. In the guidance of the problems that Mosek can solve I could not find a "close" example. Hence, I wonder: (1) Is Mosek suitable to solve the problem above? (2) If yes, how can I readapt the problem above to be solved by Mosek? (3) If not, could you suggest an alternative solver I might use?
Yes, the upper bound on softplus function, or more general log-sum-exp, can be modeled with the exponential cone like here https://docs.mosek.com/modeling-cookbook/expo.html#softplus-function
Here is an example where log-sum-exp is used in a bigger problem https://docs.mosek.com/latest/pythonfusion/case-studies-logistic.html#doc-case-studies-logistic
Many modeling tools that can use Mosek as a solver will have a log_sum_exp atom available directly, for instance see https://www.cvxpy.org/tutorial/functions/index.html
I want to just be sure that I am eligible to use Bonmin and Couenne for solving just the NLP problem (Still I do not have integer variable) and I am eager to obtain global optimum not local. I also read that Ipopt first search for the global answer and if it does not find that it will provide a local answer. How I can understand my answer is a global answer when I using Ipopt. Also, I want to what is the best NLP and MINLP open source pythonic solvers for these issues that can be merged with Pyomo?
The main reason for my question is the following output using Bonmin:
NOTE: You are using Ipopt by default with the MUMPS linear solver.
Other linear solvers might be more efficient (see Ipopt documentation).
Regards
Some notes:
(1) "Ipopt first search for the global answer and if it does not find that it will provide a local answer" This is probably not how I would phrase it. IPOPT finds local solutions. For some problems these will be the global solution. For convex problems, this is always the case (except for numerical issues).
(2) Bonmin is a local MINLP solver, Couenne is a global NLP/MINLP solver. Typically Bonmin can solve larger problems than Couenne, but you get local solutions.
(3) "NOTE: You are using Ipopt by default with the MUMPS linear solver. Other linear solvers might be more efficient (see Ipopt documentation)." This is just a notification that you are using IPOPT with linear algebra routines from MUMPS. There are other linear sub-solvers that IPOPT can use and that may perform better on large problems. Often the HARWELL routines (typically called MAnn) give better performance. MUMPS is free while the Harwell routines require a license.
In a follow-up answer (well it is not answer at all) it is stated:
Regarding Ipopt how I can understand that it is finding the global
solution or local optimum? the code will notify that? Regarding to
Bonmin according to AMPL page AMPL It provides the global solution for
the convex problem " Finds globally optimal solutions to convex
nonlinear problems in continuous and discrete variables, and may be
applied heuristically to nonconvex problems." And you were saying that
it is obtained the local solution, I am a bit confused on this part.
But the general question about all those codes is that how I can find
out that the answer is global optimum?
(a) Ipopt does not know if a solution is a local or a global optimal solution. For convex problems a local optimum is a global optimal solution. You will need to convince yourself the problem you pass on to Ipopt is convex (Ipopt will not do this for you).
(b) Bonmin: the same: if the problem is convex it will find global solutions. Otherwise you will get a local solution. You will get no notification whether a solution is a global solution: Bonmin does not know if a solution is a global optimum.
(c) When looking for guaranteed global solutions you can use a local solver only when the problem is convex. For other problems you need a global solver. Another approach is to use a multi-start algorithm with a local solver. That gives you confidence that you are not ending up with a bad local optimum.
If possible, I suggest to discuss this with your teacher. These concepts are important to understand (and most solver manuals assume you know about them).
I am trying to solve an optimisation problem consisting in finding the global maximum of a high dimensional (10+) monotonic function (as in monotonic in every direction). The constraints are such that they cut the search space with planes.
I have coded the whole thing in pyomo and I am using the ipopt solver. In most cases, I am confident it converges successfully to the global optimal. But if I play a bit with the constraints I see that it sometimes converges to a local minima.
It looks like a exploration-exploitation trade-off.
I have looked into the options that can be passed to ipopt and the list is so long that I cannot understand which parameters to play with to help with the convergence to the global minima.
edit:
Two hints of a solution:
my variables used to be defined with very infinite bounds, e.g. bounds=(0,None) to move on the infinite half-line. I have enforced two finite bounds on them.
I am now using multiple starts with:
opt = SolverFactory('multistart')
results = opt.solve(self.model, solver='ipopt', strategy='midpoint_guess_and_bound')
So far this has made my happy with the convergence.
Sorry, IPOPT is a local solver. If you really want to find global solutions, you can use a global solver such as Baron, Couenne or Antigone. There is a trade-off: global solvers are slower and may not work for large problems.
Alternatively, you can help local solvers with a good initial point. Be aware that active set methods are often better in this respect than interior point methods. Sometimes multistart algorithms are used to prevent bad local optima: use a bunch of different starting points. Pyomo has some facilities to do this (see the documentation).
I know that column generation gives an optimal solution and it can be used with other heuristics. But does that make it an exact algorithm? Thanks in advance.
Traditional CG operates on the relaxed problem. Although it finds the optimal LP solution, this may not translate directly into an optimal MIP solution. For some problems (e.g. 1d cutting stock) there is evidence this gap is small, and we just apply the set of columns found for the relaxed problem to a final MIP knowing this is a good solution but necessarily optimal. So it is a heuristic.
With some effort you can use column generation inside a branch-and-bound algorithm (this is called branch-and-price). This gives proven optimal solutions.
An exact algorithm means that the algorithm can solve the optimization problem globally i.e it has given the global optima.
Column generation technique is conventionally applied to relaxed LP problem and tries to optimize the relaxed LP problem by constantly improving the current solution with the help of dual multipliers. It gives an exact LP solution for the relaxed LP problem. But sometimes in real-world problems, the exact solution of the relaxed Lp problem is not feasible to use, it needs to be translated to an integer solution in order to use it. Now if the problem scale is small, then there are many exact MIP algorithms (such as Branch and Bound) which can solve it exactly and give an integer solution. But if the problem is large-scale, even the exact MIP algorithms can take longer runtimes, hence, we use some special/intelligent heuristics to lower the difficulty of the MIP problem.
Summary: Column generation is an exact technique for solving the relaxed LP problem, not the original IP problem.
First, strictly speaking, all algorithms are heuristic, including Simplex Method.
Second, I think Column generation is a heuristic algorithm, because it solves the LP relaxation of the master problem. It does not guarantee IP optimal. Actually CG does not always converge very well.
In Gurobi, is it possible to see if a group of constraints and variables are feasible without actually optimizing the problem? It seems if the objective is a constant, Gurobi still does a lot of heavy computation to find an optimal solution, which I don't need!
Sorry. Except for very easy infeasibilities that can be detected in the presolver, Gurobi may have to do lots of work to prove whether the model is feasible or infeasible. No silver bullets here.
I am not sure if there is a better way to do this, but you can use either solution limits or time limits to stop the solver once a condition is met.
For example:
model.Params.SolutionLimit = n stops the solver once n solutions have been found.
model.Params.SolutionLimit = n stops the solver once it has run for n seconds too.
You can look at this gurobi parameters page for more info here