5 ms·

Encyclopedia of Optimization

60 points by egorpv 2y ago

fnord123 2y ago
> ebook: 1817.93 eur Wtaf.
- kardos 2y ago
  > Number of Pages > CCXXXI, 4622 Taf.
  - hyperpape 2y ago
    That doesn't really explain an 1800€ price tag. I've bought 500-100 page encyclopedias of academic subjects for $40 or $50. Projects like this are built on the work of academics, the majority of whom are publicly funded. By and large they resent the for-profit publishers who benefit from their work and sometimes reduce them to needing to pirate their own work.
    - StefanBatory 2y ago
      May I ask you what these encyclopedias were? Purely out of curiosity.
    - wakawaka28 2y ago
      This book is like 7 volumes and 4600 pages on very niche subject matter. It's high but if you need it, you need it. I'm guessing most academics can look up individual papers as needed and don't need a comprehensive summary like this, as nice as that may be.
- mrdude42 2y ago
  free.99 if you know where to look
- mightysashiman 2y ago
  Lucky you. About 2500CHF in Switzerland. Cute.
- JohnKemeny 2y ago
  It's not meant to be sold as a book, it's available thru your institute's library. The universities pay for them.
- smokel 2y ago
  The hardcover version comes in 7 volumes! [1] Unfortunately the thing is from 2008 and I suppose this kind of book doesn't age well. [1] http://titan.princeton.edu/2010-10-11/EoO2/Encyclopedia_Optimization_2E.pdf http://titan.princeton.edu/2010-10-11/EoO2/Encyclopedia_Opti...
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    That's not such a long time for math. There have not been so many innovations in the field since then IMO. Mainly the benchmarks might not be as meaningful, and GPU techniques won't be a big part of that book due to its age.
    - mattalex 2y ago
      2008 is ancient for optimization! People have tested old year 2000 lp and milp solvers against recent ones while correcting for hardware. Hardware improvements made up ~20x improvement, while lp solvers in general sped up 180x. MILP solvers speed up a full 1000x (Progress in mathematical programming solvers from 2001 to 2020). Solvers from 2008 are entirely different levels of performance: there are many problems that are unsolvable by those that are solved to zero duality gap in less than a second by more modern solvers. In MINLPs the difference is even more standing. This doesn't mean that those books are useless (they are quite good), but do not expect a solver based on those techniques to even play in the same league as modern solvers.
      - wakawaka28 2y ago
        Can you send me some of these results? I am pretty skeptical of such dramatic algorithmic improvements. I don't think the point of an encyclopedia is to cover every single topic, as nice as that would be. If you're in the market for an encyclopedia, you are probably looking for a starting point, survey, or summary of stuff that's good to know. The algorithms you're thinking of are probably in very dry papers and monographs, accessible only to experts. If you were writing a commercial-grade generic MINLP solver, you would surely be looking at the latest papers for ideas, or you simply won't be competitive with existing solvers.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
lionkor 2y ago
[flagged]
- philipkglass 2y ago
  The encyclopedia isn't about optimizing software performance. It's about mathematical optimization problems and approaches like airline scheduling and conjugate gradient methods.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
wenc 2y ago
This is a book about mathematical optimization, not code optimization. It has its place in the world (kinda like an engineering handbook), but the field is constantly evolving and actively researched (especially in frontiers like global optimization and nonlinear nonconvex optimization; linear problems are more mature but still moving at a clip, as witnessed by the vast improvement in solvers over the years). The danger of indexing too much on a canon of knowledge in a fast evolving field is that you're narrowing your view to a set of techniques that don't work so well on modern problems. Deep learning for instance is a nonconvex optimization problem where we have a lot of practical knowledge on how to make it work well, but the theoretical knowledge of why it works so well is still being developed. This is a case where practice precedes theory. Instead of an encyclopedia, I recommend subscribing to a (free) mailing list of pre-prints, Optimization Online. https://optimization-online.org/ https://optimization-online.org/
low_tech_love 2y ago
I’m fascinated by optimization but I get lost on the state of the art, since it’s usually extremely dense and reliant on you being super easy with symbols and complex abstractions (in other words, a full-time mathematician). Can anyone recommend a good didactic book or online course for a computer scientist with a good grasp of math and machine learning? It has to reach beyond linear problems.
- tasseff 2y ago
  https://www.coursera.org/learn/discrete-optimization https://www.coursera.org/learn/discrete-optimization

60 points by egorpv 2y ago

fnord123 2y ago

> ebook: 1817.93 eur Wtaf.

kardos 2y ago
> Number of Pages > CCXXXI, 4622 Taf.
- hyperpape 2y ago
  That doesn't really explain an 1800€ price tag. I've bought 500-100 page encyclopedias of academic subjects for $40 or $50. Projects like this are built on the work of academics, the majority of whom are publicly funded. By and large they resent the for-profit publishers who benefit from their work and sometimes reduce them to needing to pirate their own work.
  - StefanBatory 2y ago
    May I ask you what these encyclopedias were? Purely out of curiosity.
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    This book is like 7 volumes and 4600 pages on very niche subject matter. It's high but if you need it, you need it. I'm guessing most academics can look up individual papers as needed and don't need a comprehensive summary like this, as nice as that may be.
mrdude42 2y ago
free.99 if you know where to look
mightysashiman 2y ago
Lucky you. About 2500CHF in Switzerland. Cute.
JohnKemeny 2y ago
It's not meant to be sold as a book, it's available thru your institute's library. The universities pay for them.
smokel 2y ago
The hardcover version comes in 7 volumes! [1] Unfortunately the thing is from 2008 and I suppose this kind of book doesn't age well. [1] http://titan.princeton.edu/2010-10-11/EoO2/Encyclopedia_Optimization_2E.pdf http://titan.princeton.edu/2010-10-11/EoO2/Encyclopedia_Opti...
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  That's not such a long time for math. There have not been so many innovations in the field since then IMO. Mainly the benchmarks might not be as meaningful, and GPU techniques won't be a big part of that book due to its age.
  - mattalex 2y ago
    2008 is ancient for optimization! People have tested old year 2000 lp and milp solvers against recent ones while correcting for hardware. Hardware improvements made up ~20x improvement, while lp solvers in general sped up 180x. MILP solvers speed up a full 1000x (Progress in mathematical programming solvers from 2001 to 2020). Solvers from 2008 are entirely different levels of performance: there are many problems that are unsolvable by those that are solved to zero duality gap in less than a second by more modern solvers. In MINLPs the difference is even more standing. This doesn't mean that those books are useless (they are quite good), but do not expect a solver based on those techniques to even play in the same league as modern solvers.
    - wakawaka28 2y ago
      Can you send me some of these results? I am pretty skeptical of such dramatic algorithmic improvements. I don't think the point of an encyclopedia is to cover every single topic, as nice as that would be. If you're in the market for an encyclopedia, you are probably looking for a starting point, survey, or summary of stuff that's good to know. The algorithms you're thinking of are probably in very dry papers and monographs, accessible only to experts. If you were writing a commercial-grade generic MINLP solver, you would surely be looking at the latest papers for ideas, or you simply won't be competitive with existing solvers.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

lionkor 2y ago

[flagged]

philipkglass 2y ago
The encyclopedia isn't about optimizing software performance. It's about mathematical optimization problems and approaches like airline scheduling and conjugate gradient methods.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

wenc 2y ago

This is a book about mathematical optimization, not code optimization. It has its place in the world (kinda like an engineering handbook), but the field is constantly evolving and actively researched (especially in frontiers like global optimization and nonlinear nonconvex optimization; linear problems are more mature but still moving at a clip, as witnessed by the vast improvement in solvers over the years). The danger of indexing too much on a canon of knowledge in a fast evolving field is that you're narrowing your view to a set of techniques that don't work so well on modern problems. Deep learning for instance is a nonconvex optimization problem where we have a lot of practical knowledge on how to make it work well, but the theoretical knowledge of why it works so well is still being developed. This is a case where practice precedes theory. Instead of an encyclopedia, I recommend subscribing to a (free) mailing list of pre-prints, Optimization Online. https://optimization-online.org/ https://optimization-online.org/

low_tech_love 2y ago

I’m fascinated by optimization but I get lost on the state of the art, since it’s usually extremely dense and reliant on you being super easy with symbols and complex abstractions (in other words, a full-time mathematician). Can anyone recommend a good didactic book or online course for a computer scientist with a good grasp of math and machine learning? It has to reach beyond linear problems.

tasseff 2y ago
https://www.coursera.org/learn/discrete-optimization https://www.coursera.org/learn/discrete-optimization