Finding search directions in quasi-Newton methods for minimizing a quadratic function subject to uncertainty

• Published in: Computational optimization and applications Vol. 91; no. 1; pp. 145 - 171
• Main Authors: Peng, Shen, Canessa, Gianpiero, Ek, David, Forsgren, Anders
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.05.2025; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Arithmetic; Chance constrained model; Constraints; Convex and Discrete Geometry; Error analysis; Management Science; Mathematics; Mathematics and Statistics; Methods; Operations Research; Operations Research/Decision Theory; Optimization; Quadratic equations; Quadratic programming; Quasi Newton methods; Quasi-Newton method; Searching; Statistics; Stochastic quasi-Newton method; Subspaces; Stochastic quasi-Newton method; Quasi-Newton method; Quadratic programming; Chance constrained model
• ISSN: 0926-6003; 1573-2894; 1573-2894
• DOI: 10.1007/s10589-025-00661-4

We investigate quasi-Newton methods for minimizing a strongly convex quadratic function which is subject to errors in the evaluation of the gradients. In particular, we focus on computing search directions for quasi-Newton methods that all give identical behavior in exact arithmetic, generating minimizers of Krylov subspaces of increasing dimensions, thereby having finite termination. The BFGS quasi-Newton method may be seen as an ideal method in exact arithmetic and is empirically known to behave very well on a quadratic problem subject to small errors. We investigate large-error scenarios, in which the expected behavior is not so clear. We consider memoryless methods that are less expensive than the BFGS method, in that they generate low-rank quasi-Newton matrices that differ from the identity by a symmetric matrix of rank two. In addition, a more advanced model for generating the search directions is proposed, based on solving a chance-constrained optimization problem. Our numerical results indicate that for large errors, such a low-rank memoryless quasi-Newton method may perform better than a BFGS method. In addition, the results indicate a potential edge by including the chance-constrained model in the memoryless quasi-Newton method.