This book focuses on Augmented Lagrangian techniques for solving practical constrained optimization problems. The authors rigorously delineate mathematical convergence theory based on sequential optimality conditions and novel constraint qualifications. They also orient the book to practitioners by giving priority to results that provide insight on the practical behavior of algorithms and by providing geometrical and algorithmic interpretations of every mathematical result, and they fully describe a freely available computational package for constrained optimization and illustrate its usefulness with applications.

The purpose of this volume is to present the principles of the Augmented Lagrangian Method, together with numerous applications of this method to the numerical solution of boundary-value problems for partial differential equations or inequalities arising in Mathematical Physics, in the Mechanics of Continuous Media and in the Engineering Sciences.

This volume deals with the numerical simulation of the behavior of continuous media by augmented Lagrangian and operator-splitting methods.

Computer Science and Applied Mathematics: Constrained Optimization and Lagrange Multiplier Methods focuses on the advancements in the applications of the Lagrange multiplier methods for constrained minimization. The publication first offers information on the method of multipliers for equality constrained problems and the method of multipliers for inequality constrained and nondifferentiable optimization problems. Discussions focus on approximation procedures for nondifferentiable and ill-conditioned optimization problems; asymptotically exact minimization in the methods of multipliers; duality framework for the method of multipliers; and the quadratic penalty function method. The text then examines exact penalty methods, including nondifferentiable exact penalty functions; linearization algorithms based on nondifferentiable exact penalty functions; differentiable exact penalty functions; and local and global convergence of Lagrangian methods. The book ponders on the nonquadratic penalty functions of convex programming. Topics include large scale separable integer programming problems and the exponential method of multipliers; classes of penalty functions and corresponding methods of multipliers; and convergence analysis of multiplier methods. The text is a valuable reference for mathematicians and researchers interested in the Lagrange multiplier methods.

Analyses Lagrange multiplier theory and demonstrates its impact on the development of numerical algorithms for variational problems in function spaces.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Scale Space Methods and Variational Methods in Computer Vision, SSVM 2009, emanated from the joint edition of the 5th International Workshop on Variational, Geometric and Level Set Methods in Computer Vision, VLSM 2009 and the 7th International Conference on Scale Space and PDE Methods in Computer Vision, Scale-Space 2009, held in Voss, Norway in June 2009. The 71 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on segmentation and detection; image enhancement and reconstruction; motion analysis, optical flow, registration and tracking; surfaces and shapes; scale space and feature extraction.

Surveys the theory and history of the alternating direction method of multipliers, and discusses its applications to a wide variety of statistical and machine learning problems of recent interest, including the lasso, sparse logistic regression, basis pursuit, covariance selection, support vector machines, and many others.

This book focuses on Augmented Lagrangian techniques for solving practical constrained optimization problems. The authors: rigorously delineate mathematical convergence theory based on sequential optimality conditions and novel constraint qualifications; orient the book to practitioners by giving priority to results that provide insight on the practical behavior of algorithms and by providing geometrical and algorithmic interpretations of every mathematical result; and fully describe a freely available computational package for constrained optimization and illustrate its usefulness with applications.

Recent interest in interior point methods generated by Karmarkar's Projective Scaling Algorithm has created a new demand for this book because the methods that have followed from Karmarkar's bear a close resemblance to those described. There is no other source for the theoretical background of the logarithmic barrier function and other classical penalty functions. Analyzes in detail the "central" or "dual" trajectory used by modern path following and primal/dual methods for convex and general linear programming. As researchers begin to extend these methods to convex and general nonlinear programming problems, this book will become indispensable to them.

Optimization is an important tool used in decision science and for the analysis of physical systems used in engineering. One can trace its roots to the Calculus of Variations and the work of Euler and Lagrange. This natural and reasonable approach to mathematical programming covers numerical methods for finite-dimensional optimization problems. It begins with very simple ideas progressing through more complicated concepts, concentrating on methods for both unconstrained and constrained optimization.