Stochastic decomposition

This book summarizes developments related to a class of methods called Stochastic Decomposition (SD) algorithms, which represent an important shift in the design of optimization algorithms. Unlike traditional deterministic algorithms, SD combines sampling approaches from the statistical literature with traditional mathematical programming constructs (e.g. decomposition, cutting planes etc.). This marriage of two highly computationally oriented disciplines leads to a line of work that is most definitely driven by computational considerations. Furthermore, the use of sampled data in SD makes it…