Computer Oriented Statistical And Optimization Methods

In operations research and computer science it is common practice to evaluate the performance of optimization algorithms on the basis of computational results, and the experimental approach should follow accepted principles that guarantee the reliability and reproducibility of results. However, computational experiments differ from those in other sciences, and the last decade has seen considerable methodological research devoted to understanding the particular features of such experiments and assessing the related statistical methods. This book consists of methodological contributions on different scenarios of experimental analysis. The first part overviews the main issues in the experimental analysis of algorithms, and discusses the experimental cycle of algorithm development; the second part treats the characterization by means of statistical distributions of algorithm performance in terms of solution quality, runtime and other measures; and the third part collects advanced methods from experimental design for configuring and tuning algorithms on a specific class of instances with the goal of using the least amount of experimentation. The contributor list includes leading scientists in algorithm design, statistical design, optimization and heuristics, and most chapters provide theoretical background and are enriched with case studies. This book is written for researchers and practitioners in operations research and computer science who wish to improve the experimental assessment of optimization algorithms and, consequently, their design.

Statistics help guide us to optimal decisions under uncertainty. A large variety of statistical problems are essentially solutions to optimization problems. The mathematical techniques of optimization are fundamentalto statistical theory and practice. In this book, Jagdish Rustagi provides full-spectrum coverage of these methods, ranging from classical optimization and Lagrange multipliers, to numerical techniques using gradients or direct search, to linear, nonlinear, and dynamic programming using the Kuhn-Tucker conditions or the Pontryagin maximal principle. Variational methods and optimization in function spaces are also discussed, as are stochastic optimization in simulation, including annealing methods. The text features numerous applications, including: Finding maximum likelihood estimates, Markov decision processes, Programming methods used to optimize monitoring of patients in hospitals, Derivation of the Neyman-Pearson lemma, The search for optimal designs, Simulation of a steel mill. Suitable as both a reference and a text, this book will be of interest to advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students in statistics, operations research, management and engineering sciences, and related fields. Most of the material can be covered in one semester by students with a basic background in probability and statistics. Covers optimization from traditional methods to recent developments such as Karmarkars algorithm and simulated annealing Develops a wide range of statistical techniques in the unified context of optimization Discusses applications such as optimizing monitoring of patients and simulating steel mill operations Treats numerical methods and applications Includes exercises and references for each chapter Covers topics such as linear, nonlinear, and dynamic programming, variational methods, and stochastic optimization

This comprehensive text provides a thorough understanding of mathematical concepts and their applications with special emphasis on computational algorithms. The book gives a detailed discussion on all the relevant topics of both numerical and statistical methods, which are nowadays very important at computing level. It also includes the basic issues related to theory of estimation and testing of hypothesis, various sampling tests, and analysis of variance with plenty of illustrations. The topics covered in this book are supported by a large number of worked-out examples, C programs and algorithms to facilitate clear understanding of various theories discussed on numerical and statistical methods. The text is intended for the undergraduate students of computer engineering and postgraduate students of computer applications.

Optimization techniques are used to find the values of a set of parameters which maximize or minimize some objective function of interest. Such methods have become of great importance in statistics for estimation, model fitting, etc. This text attempts to give a brief introduction to optimization methods and their use in several important areas of statistics. It does not pretend to provide either a complete treatment of optimization techniques or a comprehensive review of their application in statistics; such a review would, of course, require a volume several orders of magnitude larger than this since almost every issue of every statistics journal contains one or other paper which involves the application of an optimization method. It is hoped that the text will be useful to students on applied statistics courses and to researchers needing to use optimization techniques in a statistical context. Lastly, my thanks are due to Bertha Lakey for typing the manuscript.