INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING AND OPERATIONS RESEARCH

PRESENTS

IEOR SPECIAL SEMINAR

 

TUESDAY

MARCH 7, 2006

 

 

A Model Reference Adaptive Search Method for Global Optimization

 

 

Jiaqiao Hu

University of Maryland, College Park

 

 

 

Abstract:

 

We propose a novel general framework called Model Reference Adaptive Search (MRAS) for solving global optimization problems. The method iteratively updates a parameterized probability distribution on the solution space so that the sequence of candidate solutions generated from this distribution will converge asymptotically to the global optimum. We provide a particular instantiation of the framework and establish its global convergence properties in both continuous and discrete (combinatorial) domains. In addition, we explore the relationship between the recently proposed Cross-Entropy (CE) method and MRAS, and show that the CE method can also be interpreted as an instance of the MRAS framework. The extension of the MRAS method to stochastic optimization problems is also discussed. Finally, we carry out numerical experiments to investigate the performance of the method.

 


 

 

TIME AND LOCATION: 3:00 - 4:00 P.M. - 4193 ETCHEVERRY HALL

 REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED @ 2:30 P.M.