The modern era of interior-point methods dates to 1984, when Karmarkar proposed his algorithm for linear programming. In the years since then, algorithms and software for linear programming have become quite sophisticated, while extensions to more general classes of problems, such as convex quadratic programming, semidefinite programming, and nonconvex and nonlinear problems, have reached varying levels of maturity. We review some of the key developments in the area, including comments on both the complexity theory and practical algorithms for linear programming, semidefinite programming, monotone linear complementarity, and convex programming over sets that can be characterized by self-concordant barrier functions.

We perform a smoothed analysis of a termination phase for linear programming algorithms. By combining this analysis with the smoothed analysis of Renegar’s condition number by Dunagan, Spielman and Teng

We consider an infeasible-interior-point algorithm, endowed with a finite termination scheme, applied to random linear programs generated according to a model of Todd. Such problems have degenerate optimal solutions, and possess no feasible starting point. We use no information regarding an optimal solution in the initialization of the algorithm. Our main result is that the expected number of iterations before termination with an exact optimal solution is O(n ln(n)). Keywords: Linear Programming, Average-Case Behavior, Infeasible-Interior-Point Algorithm. Running Title: Probabilistic Analysis of an LP Algorithm 1 Dept. of Management Sciences, University of Iowa. Supported by an Interdisciplinary Research Grant from the Center for Advanced Studies, University of Iowa. 2 Dept. of Mathematics, Valdosta State University. Supported by an Interdisciplinary Research Grant from the Center for Advanced Studies, University of Iowa. 3 Dept. of Mathematics, University of Iowa. Supported by ...

We perform a smoothed analysis of Renegar’s condition number for linear programming by analyzing the distribution of the distance to ill-posedness of a linear program subject to a slight Gaussian perturbation. In particular, we show that for every n-by-d matrix Ā, n-vector ¯ b, and d-vector ¯c satisfying ∥ ∥ Ā, ¯ b, ¯c ∥ ∥ F ≤ 1 and every σ ≤ 1, E [log C(A, b, c)] = O(log(nd/σ)), A,b,c where A, b and c are Gaussian perturbations of Ā, ¯ b and ¯c of variance σ 2 and C(A, b, c) is the condition number of the linear program defined by (A, b, c). From this bound, we obtain a smoothed analysis of interior point algorithms. By combining this with the smoothed analysis of finite termination of Spielman and Teng (Math. Prog. Ser. B, 2003), we show that the smoothed complexity of interior point algorithms for linear programming is O(n 3 log(nd/σ)).