A necessary condition for the guarantee of the superiorization method

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Barshad, Kay, Censor, Yair, Moursi, Walaa, Weames, Tyler, Wolkowicz, Henry
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Barshad, Kay
Censor, Yair
Moursi, Walaa
Weames, Tyler
Wolkowicz, Henry
author_facet Barshad, Kay
Censor, Yair
Moursi, Walaa
Weames, Tyler
Wolkowicz, Henry
contents We study a method that involves principally convex feasibility-seeking and makes secondary efforts of objective function value reduction. This is the well-known superiorization method (SM), where the iterates of an asymptotically convergent iterative feasibility-seeking algorithm are perturbed by objective function nonascent steps. We investigate the question under what conditions a sequence generated by an SM algorithm asymptotically converges to a feasible point whose objective function value is superior (meaning smaller or equal) to that of a feasible point reached by the corresponding unperturbed one (i.e., the exactly same feasibility-seeking algorithm that the SM algorithm employs.) This question is yet only partially answered in the literature. We present a condition under which an SM algorithm that uses negative gradient descent steps in its perturbations fails to yield such a superior outcome. The significance of the discovery of this negative condition is that it necessitates that the inverse of this condition will have to be assumed to hold in any future guarantee result for the SM. The condition is important for practitioners who use the SM because it is avoidable in experimental work with the SM, thus increasing the success rate of the method in real-world applications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_03867
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A necessary condition for the guarantee of the superiorization method
Barshad, Kay
Censor, Yair
Moursi, Walaa
Weames, Tyler
Wolkowicz, Henry
Optimization and Control
Numerical Analysis
Medical Physics
We study a method that involves principally convex feasibility-seeking and makes secondary efforts of objective function value reduction. This is the well-known superiorization method (SM), where the iterates of an asymptotically convergent iterative feasibility-seeking algorithm are perturbed by objective function nonascent steps. We investigate the question under what conditions a sequence generated by an SM algorithm asymptotically converges to a feasible point whose objective function value is superior (meaning smaller or equal) to that of a feasible point reached by the corresponding unperturbed one (i.e., the exactly same feasibility-seeking algorithm that the SM algorithm employs.) This question is yet only partially answered in the literature. We present a condition under which an SM algorithm that uses negative gradient descent steps in its perturbations fails to yield such a superior outcome. The significance of the discovery of this negative condition is that it necessitates that the inverse of this condition will have to be assumed to hold in any future guarantee result for the SM. The condition is important for practitioners who use the SM because it is avoidable in experimental work with the SM, thus increasing the success rate of the method in real-world applications.
title A necessary condition for the guarantee of the superiorization method
topic Optimization and Control
Numerical Analysis
Medical Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.03867