Noisyopt: A Python library for optimizing noisy functions

noisyopt is concerned with solving an (possibly bound-constrained) optimization problem of the kind

\[\min_{\boldsymbol x} f(\boldsymbol x) = \min_{\boldsymbol x} \mathbb{E}[F(\boldsymbol x, \xi)]\]

where evaluations of the function f are not directly possible, but only evaluation of the function F. The expectation value of F is f, but F also depends on some random noise. Such optimization problems are known under various names, such as stochastic approximation, stochastic optimization/programming, or noisy optimization. They arise in various contexts from Simulation-based optimization, to machine learning.

To solve such optimization problems the package currently implements two (derivative-free) algorithms:

Further algorithms might be added in the future – you are invited to contribute! The package also contains a function to find the root of a noisy function by a bisection algorithm with an adaptive number of function evaluations.

Noisyopt is concerned with local optimization, if you are interested in global optimization you might want to have a look at Bayesian optimization techniques (see e.g. scikit-optimize). For optimizing functions that are not noisy take a look at scipy.optimize.

Documentation

You can install noisyopt using pip:

pip install noisyopt

Minimal usage example:

import numpy as np
from noisyopt import minimizeCompass

def obj(x):
    return (x**2).sum() + 0.1*np.random.randn()

res = minimizeCompass(obj, x0=[1.0, 2.0], deltatol=0.1, paired=False)

For further documentation see below or the usage examples.

Further reading

If you use and like this package, you might want to read and cite the papers describing the implemented algorithms:

[Mayer2016]Mayer, A.; Mora, T.; Rivoire, O. & Walczak, A. M. Diversity of immune strategies explained by adaptation to pathogen statistics. PNAS, 2016, 113(31), 8630-8635. Relevant section is in the Supplementary Information entitled “Pattern-search based optimization for problems with noisy function evaluations”.
[Spall1998]Spall, JC. Implementation of the simultaneous perturbation algorithm for stochastic optimization. Aerospace and Electronic Systems, IEEE Transactions on, IEEE, 1998, 34, 817-823