Title
An empirical sensitivity analysis of the Kiefer-Wolfowitz algorithm and its variants
Abstract
We investigate the mean-squared error (MSE) performance of the Kiefer-Wolfowitz (KW) stochastic approximation (SA) algorithm and two of its variants, namely the scaled-and-shifted KW (SSKW) in Broadie, Cicek, and Zeevi (2011) and Kesten's rule. We conduct a sensitivity analysis of KW with various tuning sequences and initial start values and implement the algorithms for two contrasting functions. From our numerical experiments, SSKW is less sensitive to initial start values under a set of pre-specified parameters, but KW and Kesten's rule outperform SSKW if they begin with well-tuned parameter values. We also investigate the tightness of an MSE bound for quadratic functions, a relevant issue for determining how long to run an SA algorithm. Our numerical experiments indicate the MSE bound for quadratic functions for the KW algorithm is sensitive to the noise level.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1109/WSC.2013.6721485
WSC '13: Winter Simulation Conference Washington D.C. December, 2013
Keywords
Field
DocType
mean square error methods,quadratic programming,sensitivity analysis,stochastic programming,KW SA algorithm,Kesten's rule,Kiefer-Wolfowitz algorithm,Kiefer-Wolfowitz stochastic approximation,MSE performance,empirical sensitivity analysis,mean-squared error performance,quadratic functions,scaled-and-shifted KW,stochastic optimization,tuning sequences
Noise level,Algorithm,Quadratic function,Quadratic programming,Stochastic programming,Stochastic approximation,Mathematics
Conference
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
0891-7736
978-1-4799-2077-8
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.35
3
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Marie Chau1101.52
Huashuai Qu2444.55
Michael C. Fu31161128.16
Ilya O. Ryzhov4162.41