In this paper, we develop a simple and fast online algorithm for solving a class of binary integer linear programs (LPs) arisen in general resource allocation problem. The algorithm requires only one single pass through the input data and is free of doing any matrix inversion. It can be viewed as both an approximate algorithm for solving binary integer LPs and a fast algorithm for solving online LP problems. The algorithm is inspired by an equivalent form of the dual problem of the relaxed LP and it essentially performs (one-pass) projected stochastic subgradient descent in the dual space. We analyze the algorithm in two different models, stochastic input and random permutation, with minimal technical assumptions on the input data. The algorithm achieves $O\left(m \sqrt{n}\right)$ expected regret under the stochastic input model and $O\left((m+\log n)\sqrt{n}\right)$ expected regret under the random permutation model, and it achieves $O(m \sqrt{n})$ expected constraint violation under both models, where $n$ is the number of decision variables and $m$ is the number of constraints. The algorithm enjoys the same performance guarantee when generalized to a multi-dimensional LP setting which covers a wider range of applications. In addition, we employ the notion of permutational Rademacher complexity and derive regret bounds for two earlier online LP algorithms for comparison. Both algorithms improve the regret bound with a factor of $\sqrt{m}$ by paying more computational cost. Furthermore, we demonstrate how to convert the possibly infeasible solution to a feasible one through a randomized procedure. Numerical experiments illustrate the general applicability and effectiveness of the algorithms.
An Approximate Dynamic Programming Approach to Adversarial Online Learning
University of Illinois at Chicago(伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校);Univ. Grenoble Alpes(格勒诺布尔大学);INRIA(法国国家信息与自动化研究所);CNRS(法国国家科学研究中心);Grenoble INP(格勒诺布尔理工学院);LIG(格勒诺布尔信息与信号处理实验室);Max-Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS)(马克斯·普朗克软件系统研究所);University of California, Berkeley(加利福尼亚大学伯克利分校)