Function approximation | EPFL Graph Search

In general, a function approximation problem asks us to select a function among a that closely matches ("approximates") a in a task-specific way. The need for function approximations arises in many branches of applied mathematics, and computer science in particular , such as predicting the growth of microbes in microbiology. Function approximations are used where theoretical models are unavailable or hard to compute. One can distinguish two major classes of function approximation problems: First, for known target functions approximation theory is the branch of numerical analysis that investigates how certain known functions (for example, special functions) can be approximated by a specific class of functions (for example, polynomials or rational functions) that often have desirable properties (inexpensive computation, continuity, integral and limit values, etc.). Second, the target function, call it g, may be unknown; instead of an explicit formula, only a set of points of the

Optimal Control Strategies of Seasonal Storage Devices for District Energy Management

Julien Jocelyn Leprince

The potential energy savings resulting from the cooperative management of community districts, also known as energy hubs, has been widely demonstrated throughout the literature. Various developed predictive control strategies have proven to generate remarkable gains by exploiting the shared energy generation, conversion and storage devices of building communities. However, one difficulty amongst these methods lie in the integration of information regarding the long term perturbations brought to the system. While most of the existing work considers prediction horizons ranging from day ahead to weekly time frames, recent studies have explored the control of inter-seasonal storage units on a yearly basis through available historical data sets. This study focuses on testing and improving the existing methods while integrating combined and stand alone wind generation to the system. In particular, the contribution of the seasonal storage state bounds for Value function approximation and control process has been investigated for several well-known methods, including scenario approach, stochastic dual dynamic programing and adaptive dynamic programing. Solving the resulting multistage stochastic optimization problem reveals very good results and demonstrate the contributions of the bounds to almost all Value function approximation methods. In fine, the integration of wind production to the system underlines the importance of seasonal trends for efficient optimization of long term storage and suggests using tolerance margins around the bounds for systems particularly sensitive to perturbations.

2018

Numerical methods for option pricing: polynomial approximation and high dimensionality

Francesco Statti

Options are some of the most traded financial instruments and computing their price is a central task in financial mathematics and in practice. Consequently, the development of numerical algorithms for pricing options is an active field of research. In general, evaluating the price of a specific option relies on the properties of the stochastic model used for the underlying asset price. In this thesis we develop efficient and accurate numerical methods for option pricing in a specific class of models: polynomial models. They are a versatile tool for financial modeling and have useful properties that can be exploited for option pricing. Significant challenges arise when developing option pricing techniques. For instance, the underlying model might have a high-dimensional parameter space. Furthermore, treating multi-asset options yields high-dimensional pricing problems. Therefore, the pricing method should be able to handle high dimensionality. Another important aspect is the efficiency of the algorithm: in real-world applications, option prices need to be delivered within short periods of time, making the algorithmic complexity a potential bottleneck. In this thesis, we address these challenges by developing option pricing techniques that are able to handle low and high-dimensional problems, and we propose complexity reduction techniques. The thesis consists of four parts: First, we present a methodology for European and American option pricing. The method uses the moments of the underlying price process to produce monotone sequences of lower and upper bounds of the option price. The bounds are obtained by solving a sequence of polynomial optimization problems. As the order of the moments increases, the bounds become sharper and eventually converge to the exact price under appropriate assumptions. Second, we develop a fast algorithm for the incremental computation of nested block triangular matrix exponentials. This algorithm allows for an efficient incremental computation of the moment sequence of polynomial jump-diffusions. In other words, moments of order 0, 1, 2, 3... are computed sequentially until a dynamically evaluated criterion tells us to stop. The algorithm is based on the scaling and squaring technique and reduces the complexity of the pricing algorithms that require such an incremental moment computation. Third, we develop a complexity reduction technique for high-dimensional option pricing. To this end, we first consider the option price as a function of model and payoff parameters. Then, the tensorized Chebyshev interpolation is used on the parameter space to increase the efficiency in computing option prices, while maintaining the required accuracy. The high dimensionality of the problem is treated by expressing the tensorized interpolation in the tensor train format and by deriving an efficient way, which is based on tensor completion, to approximate the interpolation coefficients. Lastly, we propose a methodology for pricing single and multi-asset European options. The approach is a combination of Monte Carlo simulation and function approximation. We address the memory limitations that arise when treating very high-dimensional applications by combining the method with optimal sampling strategies and using a randomized algorithm to reduce the storage complexity of the approach. The obtained numerical results show the effectiveness of the algorithms developed in this thesis.

EPFL2019

Continuation Methods For Riemannian Optimization

Daniel Kressner, Axel Elie Joseph Séguin

Numerical continuation in the context of optimization can be used to mitigate convergence issues due to a poor initial guess. In this work, we extend this idea to Riemannian optimization problems, that is, the minimization of a target function on a Riemannian manifold. For this purpose, a suitable homotopy is constructed between the original problem and a problem that admits an easy solution. We develop and analyze a path-following numerical continuation algorithm on manifolds for solving the resulting parameter-dependent equation. To illustrate our developments, we consider two typical classical applications of Riemannian optimization: the computation of the Karcher mean and low-rank matrix completion. We demonstrate that numerical continuation can yield improvements for challenging instances of both problems.

SIAM PUBLICATIONS2022

Numerical methods for option pricing: polynomial approximation and high dimensionality

Francesco Statti

EPFL2019