An Investigation Into Predict-and-Optimize Machine Learning

Predict-and-Optimize (PnO) is a relatively new machine learning paradigm that has attracted recent interest: it concerns the prediction of parameters that determine the value of solutions to an optimization problem, such that the optimizer ends up picking a good solution. Training estimators with standard loss functions like mean squared error...

Deepification: Learning Variable Ordering Heuristics in Constraint Optimization Problems

Constraint programming is a paradigm for solving combinatorial problems by checking whether constraints are satisfied in a constraint satisfaction problem or by optimizing an objective in a constraint optimization problem. To find solutions, the solver needs to find a variable and value ordering. Numerous heuristics designed by human experts...