We consider the one-to-one Pickup and Delivery Problem (PDP) in Euclidean Space with arbitrary dimension @math where @math transportation requests are picked i.i.d. with a separate origin-destination pair for each object to be moved. First, we consider the problem from the customer perspective where the objective is to compute a plan for transporting the objects such that the Euclidean distance traveled by the vehicles when carrying objects is minimized. We develop a polynomial time asymptotically optimal algorithm for vehicles with capacity @math for this case. This result also holds imposing LIFO constraints for loading and unloading objects. Secondly, we extend our algorithm to the classical single-vehicle PDP where the objective is to minimize the total distance traveled by the vehicle and present results indicating that the extended algorithm is asymptotically optimal for a fixed vehicle capacity if the origins and destinations are picked i.i.d. using the same distribution.
Stein @cite_6 also conducts a probabilistic analysis but he looks at the variant where @math and @math and where @math origins and @math destinations are picked independently using a uniform distribution on some planar region. Stein shows that the value of the optimal solution divided by @math converges almost surely to a constant times the square root of the area of the region. Stein also shows how to solve the problem he considers by concatenating two TSP tours on the origins and destinations respectively. This way of solving the problem yields a solution which is roughly @math O(n^2) @math 4 @math d=2 @math c=+ @math d=2 @math c = O( n) @math d @math c$ @cite_13 .
@cite_13 @cite_6
2090424605 2083391552
The problem of finding large average submatrices of a real-valued matrix arises in the exploratory analysis of data from a variety of disciplines, ranging from genomics to social sciences. In this paper we provide a detailed asymptotic analysis of large average submatrices of an @math Gaussian random matrix. The first part of the paper addresses global maxima. For fixed @math we identify the average and the joint distribution of the @math submatrix having largest average value. As a dual result, we establish that the size of the largest square sub-matrix with average bigger than a fixed positive constant is, with high probability, equal to one of two consecutive integers that depend on the threshold and the matrix dimension @math . The second part of the paper addresses local maxima. Specifically we consider submatrices with dominant row and column sums that arise as the local optima of iterative search procedures for large average submatrices. For fixed @math , we identify the limiting average value and joint distribution of a @math submatrix conditioned to be a local maxima. In order to understand the density of such local optima and explain the quick convergence of such iterative procedures, we analyze the number @math of local maxima, beginning with exact asymptotic expressions for the mean and fluctuation behavior of @math . For fixed @math , the mean of @math is @math while the standard deviation is @math . Our principal result is a Gaussian central limit theorem for @math that is based on a new variant of Stein's method. Classical stochastic gradient methods are well suited for minimizing expected-value objective functions. However, they do not apply to the minimization of a nonlinear function involving expected values or a composition of two expected-value functions, i.e., the problem @math minxEvfv(Ew[gw(x)]). In order to solve this stochastic composition problem, we propose a class of stochastic compositional gradient descent (SCGD) algorithms that can be viewed as stochastic versions of quasi-gradient method. SCGD update the solutions based on noisy sample gradients of @math fv,gw and use an auxiliary variable to track the unknown quantity @math Ewgw(x). We prove that the SCGD converge almost surely to an optimal solution for convex optimization problems, as long as such a solution exists. The convergence involves the interplay of two iterations with different time scales. For nonsmooth convex problems, the SCGD achieves a convergence rate of @math O(k-1 4) in the general case and @math O(k-2 3) in the strongly convex case, after taking k samples. For smooth convex problems, the SCGD can be accelerated to converge at a rate of @math O(k-2 7) in the general case and @math O(k-4 5) in the strongly convex case. For nonconvex problems, we prove that any limit point generated by SCGD is a stationary point, for which we also provide the convergence rate analysis. Indeed, the stochastic setting where one wants to optimize compositions of expected-value functions is very common in practice. The proposed SCGD methods find wide applications in learning, estimation, dynamic programming, etc. This is the second article of a series of papers on stochastic homogenization of discrete elliptic equations. We consider a discrete elliptic equation on the @math -dimensional lattice @math with random coefficients @math of the simplest type: They are identically distributed and independent from edge to edge. On scales large w. r. t. the lattice spacing (i. e. unity), the solution operator is known to behave like the solution operator of a (continuous) elliptic equation with constant deterministic coefficients. This symmetric ''homogenized'' matrix @math is characterized by @math for any direction @math , where the random field @math (the ''corrector'') is the unique solution of @math in @math such that @math , @math is stationary and @math , @math denoting the ensemble average (or expectation). In order to approximate the homogenized coefficients @math , the corrector problem is usually solved in a box @math of size @math with periodic boundary conditions, and the space averaged energy on @math defines an approximation @math of @math . Although the statistics is modified (independence is replaced by periodic correlations) and the ensemble average is replaced by a space average, the approximation @math converges almost surely to @math as @math . In this paper, we give estimates on both errors. To be more precise, we do not consider periodic boundary conditions on a box of size @math , but replace the elliptic operator by @math with (typically) @math , as standard in the homogenization literature. We then replace the ensemble average by a space average on @math , and estimate the overall error on the homogenized coefficients in terms of @math and @math . In this paper we study noisy sorting without re-sampling. In this problem there is an unknown order @math for all pairs @math , where @math is a constant and @math for all @math and @math . It is assumed that the errors are independent. Given the status of the queries the goal is to find the maximum likelihood order. In other words, the goal is find a permutation @math that minimizes the number of pairs @math where @math . The problem so defined is the feedback arc set problem on distributions of inputs, each of which is a tournament obtained as a noisy perturbations of a linear order. Note that when @math and @math is large, it is impossible to recover the original order @math . It is known that the weighted feedback are set problem on tournaments is NP-hard in general. Here we present an algorithm of running time @math and sampling complexity @math that with high probability solves the noisy sorting without re-sampling problem. We also show that if @math is an optimal solution of the problem then it is close'' to the original order. More formally, with high probability it holds that @math and @math . Our results are of interest in applications to ranking, such as ranking in sports, or ranking of search items based on comparisons by experts.