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Main Authors: Feng, Shengyu, Yang, Yiming
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.15534
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author Feng, Shengyu
Yang, Yiming
author_facet Feng, Shengyu
Yang, Yiming
contents Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP) solvers are mostly built upon a Branch-and-Bound (B\&B) algorithm, where the efficiency of traditional solvers heavily depends on hand-crafted heuristics for branching. The past few years have witnessed the increasing popularity of data-driven approaches to automatically learn these heuristics. However, the success of these methods is highly dependent on the availability of high-quality demonstrations, which requires either the development of near-optimal heuristics or a time-consuming sampling process. This paper averts this challenge by proposing Suboptimal-Demonstration-Guided Reinforcement Learning (SORREL) for learning to branch. SORREL selectively learns from suboptimal demonstrations based on value estimation. It utilizes suboptimal demonstrations through both offline reinforcement learning on the demonstrations generated by suboptimal heuristics and self-imitation learning on past good experiences sampled by itself. Our experiments demonstrate its advanced performance in both branching quality and training efficiency over previous methods for various MILPs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_15534
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SORREL: Suboptimal-Demonstration-Guided Reinforcement Learning for Learning to Branch
Feng, Shengyu
Yang, Yiming
Machine Learning
Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP) solvers are mostly built upon a Branch-and-Bound (B\&B) algorithm, where the efficiency of traditional solvers heavily depends on hand-crafted heuristics for branching. The past few years have witnessed the increasing popularity of data-driven approaches to automatically learn these heuristics. However, the success of these methods is highly dependent on the availability of high-quality demonstrations, which requires either the development of near-optimal heuristics or a time-consuming sampling process. This paper averts this challenge by proposing Suboptimal-Demonstration-Guided Reinforcement Learning (SORREL) for learning to branch. SORREL selectively learns from suboptimal demonstrations based on value estimation. It utilizes suboptimal demonstrations through both offline reinforcement learning on the demonstrations generated by suboptimal heuristics and self-imitation learning on past good experiences sampled by itself. Our experiments demonstrate its advanced performance in both branching quality and training efficiency over previous methods for various MILPs.
title SORREL: Suboptimal-Demonstration-Guided Reinforcement Learning for Learning to Branch
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.15534