Solution to overdetermined systems - math

How to find solution to overdetermined systems in Macsyma, Scilab, Octave?

You don't say what type of system it is. If it is non-linear, you are in a very serious mess. In the linear case, You are trying to solve the system Ax = y, where A is not invertible. Even though it is not invertible, it admits a pseudo inverse, which you can stably compute using SVD.

The backslash operator gives the least-squares solution in Scilab.

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Linear and bilinear constraint with Gurobi

Looking at Gurobi's expamples for programs, there is one for QCPs, and one for bilinear programs, and I was wondering how to add a constraint that is linear and bilinear (sorry if there's specific jargon for such a problem) in R (or any other language, if easier, but I am using R). Specifically, how would I add a matrix of constraints of the form (for example) that
xz + y - yz < c
where c is some constant. I think I could use mccormick relaxation to re-write this as a linear program (right?), but I was wondering if Gurobi has easy syntax for such constraints?
My current understanding of the syntax for QCPs and bilinear programs is that you use a sparse matrix construction of the form
And so you cannot refer to x,y,z on their own..
Figured it out. In case anyone else comes across a similar issue, you create a quadcon list and add it to the model, as described here. For an illustration of using quadcon, it is quite similar to quadratic constraints in this example, though this example is not explicitly of the type of constraint I asked about.

Mathematical constrained optimization in R

I have a mathematical optimization which I wish to solve in R consider this system/problem:
How Can I solve this problem in R?
In this model Budget, p_l for all l and mu_target are fixed constants while muis a given m-dimensional vector and R is a given n by m matrix.
I have looked into constrOptim and lp but I don't have the imagination to implement the constraints
Those functions require that I have a "constraint" matrix but my problem is that I simply don't know how to design that constraint matrix. There are not many examples with decision variables on both sides of the equations.
Have a look on the nloptr package. It has quite extensive documentation with examples. Lots of algorithms to choose from, depending what problem you are trying to resolve.
NLoptr link

Optimization in R with arbitrary constraints

I have done it in Excel but need to run a proper simulation in R.
I need to minimize function F(x) (x is a vector) while having constraints that sum(x)=1, all values in x are [0,1] and another function G(x) > G_0.
I have tried it with optim and constrOptim. None of them give you this option.
The problem you are referring to is (presumably) a non-linear optimization with non-linear constraints. This is one of the most general optimization problems.
The package I have used for these purposes is called nloptr: see here. From my experience, it is both versatile and fast. You can specify both equality and inequality constaints by setting eval_g_eq and eval_g_ineq, correspondingly. If the jacobians are known explicitly (can be derived analytically), specify them for faster convergence; otherwise, a numerical approximation is used.
Use this list as a general reference to optimization problems.
Write the set of equations using the Lagrange multiplier, then solve using the R command nlm.
You can do this in the OpenMx Package (currently host at the site listed below. Aiming for 2.0 relase on cran this year)
It is a general purpose package mostly used for Structural Equation Modelling, but handling nonlinear constraints.
FOr your case, make an mxModel() with your algebras expressed in mxAlgebras() and the constraints in mxConstraints()
When you mxRun() the model, the algebras will be solved within the constraints, if possible.
http://openmx.psyc.virginia.edu/

Most efficient way to solve SEVERAL linear systems Ax=b with SMALL A (minimum 3x3 maximum 8x8)

I need to solve thousands of time SMALL linear system of the type Ax=b. Here A is a matrix that is not smaller than 3x3 and maximum 8x8. I am aware of this http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/01/19/dont-invert-that-matrix/ so I dont think it is smart to invert the matrix even if the matrices are small right? So what is the most efficient way to do that? I am programming in Fortran so probably I should use lapack library right? My matrices are full and in general non-simmetric.
Thanks
A.
Caveat: I didn't look into this extensively, but I have some experience I am happy to share.
In my experience, the fastest way to solve a 3x3 system is to basically use Cramer's rule. If you need to solve multiple systems with the same matrix A, it pays to pre-compute the inverse of A. This is only true for 2x2 and 3x3.
If you have to solve multiple 4x4 systems with the same matrix, then again using the inverse is noticeably faster than the forward and back-substitution of LU. I seem to remember that it uses less operations, and in practice the difference is even more (again, in my experience). As the matrix size grows, the difference shrinks, and asymptotically the difference disappears. If you are solving systems with difference matrices, then I don't think there is an advantage in computing the inverse.
In all cases, solving the system with the inverse can be much less accurate than using the LU-decomposition is A is fairly ill-conditioned. So if accuracy is an issue, then LU-factorization is definitely the way to go.
The LU factorization sounds like just the ticket for you, and the lapack routine dgetrf will compute this for you, after which you can use dgetrs to solve that linear system. Lapack has been optimized to the gills over the years, so in all likelihood you are better using that than writing any of this code yourself.
The computational cost of computing the matrix inverse and then multiplying that by the right-hand side vector is the same if not more than computing the LU-factorization of the matrix and then forward- and back-solving to find your answer. Moreover, computing the inverse exhibits even more bizarre pathological behavior than computing the LU-factorization, the stability of which is still a fairly subtle issue. It can be useful to know the inverse for small matrices, but it sounds like you don't need that for your purpose, so why do it?
Moreover, provided there are no loop-carried dependencies, you can parallelize this using OpenMP without too much trouble.

Non Linear Integer Programming

I would like to know if there is a package in R handling non linear integer optimization.
"Basically", I would like to solve the following problem:
max f(x) s.t x in (0,10) and x is integer.
I know that some branching algorithms are able to handle the linear version of this problem, but here my function f() might be more complicated. (I can't even make sure it would be quadratic of the form f(x)=xQx).
I guess there is always the brute force solution to test all the possibilities as long as they are bounded, but I was wondering if there wasn't anything smarter.
I have a few options for you, but none of them is the silver bullet, although it looks like your silver bullet is in the works under the rino project: http://r-forge.r-project.org/projects/rino/.
Since your function is complicated, you may want to use a genetic algorithm (i.e., gradient-based optimizers may not be reliable). genoud in the rgenoud library may do the trick (link text). If you set data.type.int=TRUE it should do the trick. I have not used this library, but have some experience with GAs in matlab and the time to convergence is sensitive to the settings, so you'll be well served to read the man page a few times through.
Or, if your function in strictly concave (unlikely, since you say it may be complicated) you can solve with a gradient solver (e.g., optim) then check the neighborhood around the optimum (can't be more than 2^n points to check).
Sorry, I can't be of more help.
If it is hardly nonlinear there is no better method than brute force (you will never know if the minimum is local or if some flat-looking fragment doesn't have any narrow and deep valleys), except of course symbolic computation (which probably won't work because the function is too complicated) or soft computing, I mean things like genetic algorithms, Monte-Carlo, swarms, etc. (here you don't have a guarantee that it will find the very global minimum and because you have integer x it can be slower than brute force).
http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/Optimization.html lists the packages Rdonlp2 and Rsolnp which may be suitable.
Discrete filled function method is one of the recent methods that can find global solution of nonlinear integer programming with about 100 constraints and variables.

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