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Poster
Constrained Two-step Look-Ahead Bayesian Optimization
Yunxiang Zhang · Xiangyu Zhang · Peter Frazier

Fri Dec 10 08:30 AM -- 10:00 AM (PST) @

Recent advances in computationally efficient non-myopic Bayesian optimization offer improved query efficiency over traditional myopic methods like expected improvement, with only a modest increase in computational cost. These advances have been largely limited to unconstrained BO methods with only a few exceptions which require heavy computation. For instance, one existing multi-step lookahead constrained BO method (Lam & Willcox, 2017) relies on computationally expensive unreliable brute force derivative-free optimization of a Monte Carlo rollout acquisition function. Methods that use the reparameterization trick for more efficient derivative-based optimization of non-myopic acquisition functions in the unconstrained setting, like sample average approximation and infinitesimal perturbation analysis, do not extend: constraints introduce discontinuities in the sampled acquisition function surface. Moreover, we argue here that being non-myopic is even more important in constrained problems because fear of violating constraints pushes myopic methods away from sampling the boundary between feasible and infeasible regions, slowing the discovery of optimal solutions with tight constraints. In this paper, we propose a computationally efficient two-step lookahead constrained Bayesian optimization acquisition function (2-OPT-C) supporting both sequential and batch settings. To enable fast acquisition function optimization, we develop a novel likelihood ratio-based unbiased estimator of the gradient of the two-step optimal acquisition function that does not use the reparameterization trick. In numerical experiments, 2-OPT-C typically improves query efficiency by 2x or more over previous methods, and in some cases by 10x or more.

Author Information

Yunxiang Zhang (Cornell University)
Xiangyu Zhang (Cornell University)
Peter Frazier (Cornell / Uber)

Peter Frazier is an Associate Professor in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell University, and a Staff Data Scientist at Uber. He received a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Financial Engineering from Princeton University in 2009. His research is at the intersection of machine learning and operations research, focusing on Bayesian optimization, multi-armed bandits, active learning, and Bayesian nonparametric statistics. He is an associate editor for Operations Research, ACM TOMACS, and IISE Transactions, and is the recipient of an AFOSR Young Investigator Award and an NSF CAREER Award.

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