Bayesian optimization with a finite budget: An approximate dynamic programming approach

We consider the problem of optimizing an expensive objective function when a finite budget of total evaluations is prescribed. In that context, the optimal solution strategy for Bayesian optimization can be formulated as a dynamic programming instance. This results in a complex problem with uncounta...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wolpert, David H., Lam, Remi Roger Alain Paul, Willcox, Karen E
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Format: Article
Published: Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation 2018
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/115164
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4222-5358
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2156-9338
Description
Summary:We consider the problem of optimizing an expensive objective function when a finite budget of total evaluations is prescribed. In that context, the optimal solution strategy for Bayesian optimization can be formulated as a dynamic programming instance. This results in a complex problem with uncountable, dimension-increasing state space and an uncountable control space. We show how to approximate the solution of this dynamic programming problem using rollout, and propose rollout heuristics specifically designed for the Bayesian optimization setting. We present numerical experiments showing that the resulting algorithm for optimization with a finite budget outperforms several popular Bayesian optimization algorithms.