Documentation

Linear Programming Definition

Linear programming is the problem of finding a vector x that minimizes a linear function f^Tx subject to linear constraints:

$$\underset{x}{\min }{f}^{T}x$$

such that one or more of the following hold:

A·x ≤ b
Aeq·x = beq
l ≤ x ≤ u.

Interior-Point linprog Algorithm

The linprog 'interior-point' algorithm is very similar to the interior-point-convex quadprog Algorithm. It also shares many features with the linprog 'interior-point-legacy' algorithm. These algorithms have the same general outline:

1. Presolve, meaning simplification and conversion of the problem to a standard form.

2. Generate an initial point. The choice of an initial point is especially important for solving interior-point algorithms efficiently, and this step can be time-consuming.

3. Predictor-corrector iterations to solve the KKT equations. This step is generally the most time-consuming.

Presolve

The algorithm begins by attempting to simplify the problem by removing redundancies and simplifying constraints. The tasks performed during the presolve step include:

• Check if any variables have equal upper and lower bounds. If so, check for feasibility, and then fix and remove the variables.

• Check if any linear inequality constraint involves just one variable. If so, check for feasibility, and change the linear constraint to a bound.

• Check if any linear equality constraint involves just one variable. If so, check for feasibility, and then fix and remove the variable.

• Check if any linear constraint matrix has zero rows. If so, check for feasibility, and delete the rows.

• Check if the bounds and linear constraints are consistent.

• Check if any variables appear only as linear terms in the objective function and do not appear in any linear constraint. If so, check for feasibility and boundedness, and fix the variables at their appropriate bounds.

• Change any linear inequality constraints to linear equality constraints by adding slack variables.

If algorithm detects an infeasible or unbounded problem, it halts and issues an appropriate exit message.

The algorithm might arrive at a single feasible point, which represents the solution.

If the algorithm does not detect an infeasible or unbounded problem in the presolve step, it continues, if necessary, with the other steps. At the end, the algorithm reconstructs the original problem, undoing any presolve transformations. This final step is the postsolve step.

For simplicity, if the problem is not solved in the presolve step, the algorithm shifts all finite lower bounds to zero.

Generate Initial Point

To set the initial point, x0, the algorithm does the following.

1. Initialize x0 to ones(n,1), where n is the number of elements of the objective function vector f.

2. Convert all bounded components to have a lower bound of 0. If component i has a finite upper bound u(i), then x0(i) = u/2.

3. For components that have only one bound, modify the component if necessary to lie strictly inside the bound.

4. To put x0 close to the central path, take one predictor-corrector step, and then modify the resulting position and slack variables to lie well within any bounds. For details of the central path, see Nocedal and Wright [6], page 397.

Predictor-Corrector

Similar to the fmincon interior-point algorithm, the interior-point-convex algorithm tries to find a point where the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions hold. To describe these equations for the linear programming problem, consider the standard form of the linear programming problem after preprocessing:

$$\underset{x}{\min }{f}^{T}x\text{ subject to }\{\begin{array}{c}\overline{A}x=\overline{b}\\ x+t=u\\ x,t\ge 0.\end{array}$$

• Assume for now that all variables have at least one finite bound. By shifting and negating components, if necessary, this assumption means that all x components have a lower bound of 0.

• $$\overline{A}$$ is the extended linear matrix that includes both linear inequalities and linear equalities. $$\overline{b}$$ is the corresponding linear equality vector. $$\overline{A}$$ also includes terms for extending the vector x with slack variables s that turn inequality constraints to equality constraints:

  $$\overline{A}x=\left(\begin{array}{cc}{A}_{eq}& 0\\ A& I\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}{x}_0\\ s\end{array}\right),$$

  where x₀ means the original x vector.

• t is the vector of slacks that convert upper bounds to equalities.

The Lagrangian for this system involves the following vectors:

• y, Lagrange multipliers associated with the linear equalities

• v, Lagrange multipliers associated with the lower bound (positivity constraint)

• w, Lagrange multipliers associated with the upper bound

The Lagrangian is

$$L=f^{T}x-y^T\left(\overline{A}x-\overline{b}\right)-v^{T}x-w^T\left(u-x-t\right).$$

Therefore, the KKT conditions for this system are

$$\begin{array}{c}f-{\overline{A}}^{T}y-v+w=0\\ \overline{A}x=\overline{b}\\ x+t=u\\ v_i{x}_i=0\\ w_i{t}_i=0\\ (x,v,w,t)\ge 0.\end{array}$$

The algorithm first predicts a step from the Newton-Raphson formula, and then computes a corrector step. The corrector attempts to reduce the residual in the nonlinear complementarity equations s_iz_i = 0. The Newton-Raphson step is

where X, V, W, and T are diagonal matrices corresponding to the vectors x, v, w, and t respectively. The residual vectors on the far right side of the equation are:

• r_d, the dual residual

• r_p, the primal residual

• r_ub, the upper bound residual

• r_vx, the lower bound complementarity residual

• r_wt, the upper bound complementarity residual

To solve Equation 8-1, first convert it to the symmetric matrix form

where

$$\begin{array}{l}D=X^{-1}V+T^{-1}W\\ R=-r_d-X^{-1}{r}_{vx}+T^{-1}{r}_{wt}+T^{-1}W{r}_{ub}.\end{array}$$

All the matrix inverses in the definitions of D and R are simple to compute because the matrices are diagonal.

To derive Equation 8-2 from Equation 8-1, notice that the second row of Equation 8-2 is the same as the second matrix row of Equation 8-1. The first row of Equation 8-2 comes from solving the last two rows of Equation 8-1 for Δv and Δw, and then solving for Δt.

Equation 8-2 is symmetric, but it is not positive definite because of the –D term. Therefore, you cannot solve it using a Cholesky factorization. A few more steps lead to a different equation that is positive definite, and hence can be solved efficiently by Cholesky factorization.

The second set of rows of Equation 8-2 is

$$\overline{A}\Delta y=r_p$$

and the first set of rows is

$$-D\Delta x+{\overline{A}}^T\Delta y=-R.$$

Substituting

$$\Delta x=D^{-1}{A}^T\Delta y+D^{-1}R$$

gives

Usually, the most efficient way to find the Newton step is to solve Equation 8-3 for Δy using Cholesky factorization. Cholesky factorization is possible because the matrix multiplying Δy is obviously symmetric and, in the absence of degeneracies, is positive definite. Afterwards, to find the Newton step, back substitute to find Δx, Δt, Δv, and Δw. However, when $$\overline{A}$$ has a dense column, it can be more efficient to solve Equation 8-2 instead. The linprog interior-point algorithm chooses the solution algorithm based on the density of columns.

For more algorithm details, see Mehrotra [5].

After calculating the corrected Newton step, the algorithm performs more calculations to get both a longer current step, and to prepare for better subsequent steps. These multiple correction calculations can improve both performance and robustness. For details, see Gondzio [3].

Stopping Conditions

The predictor-corrector algorithm iterates until it reaches a point that is feasible (satisfies the constraints to within tolerances) and where the relative step sizes are small. Specifically, define

$$\rho =\max \left(1,\Vert \overline{A}\Vert ,\Vert f\Vert ,\Vert \overline{b}\Vert \right).$$

The algorithm stops when all of these conditions are satisfied:

$$\begin{array}{c}{\Vert r_p\Vert }_{\infty }\le \rho \text{TolCon}\\ {\Vert r_d\Vert }_{\infty }\le \rho \text{TolFun}\\ r_c\le \text{TolFun,}\end{array}$$

where

$$r_c=\underset{i}{\max }\left(\min \left(\left|x_i{v}_i\right|,\left|x_i\right|,\left|v_i\right|\right),\min \left(\left|t_i{w}_i\right|,\left|t_i\right|,\left|w_i\right|\right)\right).$$

r_c essentially measures the size of the complementarity residuals xv and tw, which are each vectors of zeros at a solution.

Interior-Point-Legacy Linear Programming

Introduction

The default interior-point-legacy method is based on LIPSOL ([52]), which is a variant of Mehrotra's predictor-corrector algorithm ([47]), a primal-dual interior-point method.

Main Algorithm

The algorithm begins by applying a series of preprocessing steps (see Preprocessing). After preprocessing, the problem has the form

The upper bounds constraints are implicitly included in the constraint matrix A. With the addition of primal slack variables s, Equation 8-4 becomes

which is referred to as the primal problem: x consists of the primal variables and s consists of the primal slack variables. The dual problem is

where y and w consist of the dual variables and z consists of the dual slacks. The optimality conditions for this linear program, i.e., the primal Equation 8-5 and the dual Equation 8-6, are

where x_iz_i and s_iw_i denote component-wise multiplication.

The quadratic equations x_iz_i = 0 and s_iw_i = 0 are called the complementarity conditions for the linear program; the other (linear) equations are called the feasibility conditions. The quantity

x^Tz + s^Tw

is the duality gap, which measures the residual of the complementarity portion of F when (x,z,s,w) ≥ 0.

The algorithm is a primal-dual algorithm, meaning that both the primal and the dual programs are solved simultaneously. It can be considered a Newton-like method, applied to the linear-quadratic system F(x,y,z,s,w) = 0 in Equation 8-7, while at the same time keeping the iterates x, z, w, and s positive, thus the name interior-point method. (The iterates are in the strictly interior region represented by the inequality constraints in Equation 8-5.)

The algorithm is a variant of the predictor-corrector algorithm proposed by Mehrotra. Consider an iterate v = [x;y;z;s;w], where [x;z;s;w] > 0 First compute the so-called prediction direction

$$\Delta v_p=-{\left(F^T(v)\right)}^{-1}F(v),$$

which is the Newton direction; then the so-called corrector direction

$$\Delta v_c=-{\left(F^T(v)\right)}^{-1}F\left(v+\Delta v_p\right)-\mu \widehat{e},$$

where μ > 0 is called the centering parameter and must be chosen carefully. $$\widehat{e}$$ is a zero-one vector with the ones corresponding to the quadratic equations in F(v), i.e., the perturbations are only applied to the complementarity conditions, which are all quadratic, but not to the feasibility conditions, which are all linear. The two directions are combined with a step length parameter α > 0 and update v to obtain the new iterate v⁺:

$$v^{+}=v+\alpha \left(\Delta v_p+\Delta v_c\right),$$

where the step length parameter α is chosen so that

v⁺ = [x⁺;y⁺;z⁺;s⁺;w⁺]

satisfies

[x⁺;z⁺;s⁺;w⁺] > 0.

In solving for the preceding predictor/corrector directions, the algorithm computes a (sparse) direct factorization on a modification of the Cholesky factors of A·A^T. If A has dense columns, it instead uses the Sherman-Morrison formula. If that solution is not adequate (the residual is too large), it performs an LDL factorization of an augmented system form of the step equations to find a solution. (See Example 4 — The Structure of D in the MATLAB^® ldl function reference page.)

The algorithm then loops until the iterates converge. The main stopping criteria is a standard one:

$$\frac{\Vert r_b\Vert }{\max \left(1,\Vert b\Vert \right)}+\frac{\Vert r_f\Vert }{\max \left(1,\Vert f\Vert \right)}+\frac{\Vert r_u\Vert }{\max \left(1,\Vert u\Vert \right)}+\frac{\left|f^{T}x-b^{T}y+u^{T}w\right|}{\max \left(1,\left|f^{T}x\right|,\left|b^{T}y-u^{T}w\right|\right)}\le tol,$$

where

$$\begin{array}{c}{r}_b=Ax-b\\ r_f=A^{T}y-w+z-f\\ r_u=x+s-u\end{array}$$

are the primal residual, dual residual, and upper-bound feasibility respectively, and

$$f^{T}x-b^{T}y+u^{T}w$$

is the difference between the primal and dual objective values, and tol is some tolerance. The sum in the stopping criteria measures the total relative errors in the optimality conditions in Equation 8-7.

Preprocessing

The algorithm begins by attempting to simplify the problem by removing redundancies and simplifying constraints. The tasks performed during the presolve step include:

• Check if any variables have equal upper and lower bounds. If so, check for feasibility, and then fix and remove the variables.

• Check if any linear inequality constraint involves just one variable. If so, check for feasibility, and change the linear constraint to a bound.

• Check if any linear equality constraint involves just one variable. If so, check for feasibility, and then fix and remove the variable.

• Check if any linear constraint matrix has zero rows. If so, check for feasibility, and delete the rows.

• Check if the bounds and linear constraints are consistent.

• Check if any variables appear only as linear terms in the objective function and do not appear in any linear constraint. If so, check for feasibility and boundedness, and fix the variables at their appropriate bounds.

• Change any linear inequality constraints to linear equality constraints by adding slack variables.

If algorithm detects an infeasible or unbounded problem, it halts and issues an appropriate exit message.

The algorithm might arrive at a single feasible point, which represents the solution.

If the algorithm does not detect an infeasible or unbounded problem in the presolve step, it continues, if necessary, with the other steps. At the end, the algorithm reconstructs the original problem, undoing any presolve transformations. This final step is the postsolve step.

For simplicity, the algorithm shifts all lower bounds to zero.

While these preprocessing steps can do much to speed up the iterative part of the algorithm, if the Lagrange multipliers are required, the preprocessing steps must be undone since the multipliers calculated during the algorithm are for the transformed problem, and not the original. Thus, if the multipliers are not requested, this transformation back is not computed, and might save some time computationally.

Active-Set linprog Algorithm

The medium-scale active-set linear programming algorithm is a variant of the sequential quadratic programming algorithm used by fmincon (Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP)). The difference is that the quadratic term is set to zero.

At each major iteration of the SQP method, a QP problem of the following form is solved, where A_i refers to the ith row of the m-by-n matrix A.

$$\begin{array}{c}\underset{d\in {\Re }^n}{\min }q(d)=c^{T}d,\\ A_{i}d=b_i,i=1,\mathrm{...},m_e\\ A_{i}d\le b_i,i=m_e+1,\mathrm{...},m.\end{array}$$

The method used in Optimization Toolbox™ functions is an active set strategy (also known as a projection method) similar to that of Gill et al., described in [18] and [17]. It has been modified for both Linear Programming (LP) and Quadratic Programming (QP) problems.

The solution procedure involves two phases. The first phase involves the calculation of a feasible point (if one exists). The second phase involves the generation of an iterative sequence of feasible points that converge to the solution. In this method an active set, $${\overline{A}}_k$$, is maintained that is an estimate of the active constraints (i.e., those that are on the constraint boundaries) at the solution point. Virtually all QP algorithms are active set methods. This point is emphasized because there exist many different methods that are very similar in structure but that are described in widely different terms.

$${\overline{A}}_k$$ is updated at each iteration k, and this is used to form a basis for a search direction $${\widehat{d}}_k$$. Equality constraints always remain in the active set $${\overline{A}}_k$$. The notation for the variable $${\widehat{d}}_k$$ is used here to distinguish it from d_k in the major iterations of the SQP method. The search direction $${\widehat{d}}_k$$ is calculated and minimizes the objective function while remaining on any active constraint boundaries. The feasible subspace for $${\widehat{d}}_k$$ is formed from a basis Z_k whose columns are orthogonal to the estimate of the active set $${\overline{A}}_k$$ (i.e., $${\overline{A}}_k{Z}_k=0$$). Thus a search direction, which is formed from a linear summation of any combination of the columns of Z_k, is guaranteed to remain on the boundaries of the active constraints.

The matrix Z_k is formed from the last m – l columns of the QR decomposition of the matrix $${\overline{A}}_k^T$$, where l is the number of active constraints and l < m. That is, Z_k is given by

where

$$Q^T{\overline{A}}_k^T=\left[\begin{array}{c}R\\ 0\end{array}\right].$$

Once Z_k is found, a new search direction $${\widehat{d}}_k$$ is sought that minimizes q(d) where $${\widehat{d}}_k$$ is in the null space of the active constraints. That is, $${\widehat{d}}_k$$ is a linear combination of the columns of Z_k: $${\widehat{d}}_k=Z_{k}p$$ for some vector p.

Then if you view the quadratic as a function of p, by substituting for $${\widehat{d}}_k$$, you have

Differentiating this with respect to p yields

∇q(p) is referred to as the projected gradient of the quadratic function because it is the gradient projected in the subspace defined by Z_k. The term $$Z_k^{T}H{Z}_k$$ is called the projected Hessian. Assuming the Hessian matrix H is positive definite (which is the case in this implementation of SQP), then the minimum of the function q(p) in the subspace defined by Z_k occurs when ∇q(p) = 0, which is the solution of the system of linear equations

A step is then taken of the form

At each iteration, because of the quadratic nature of the objective function, there are only two choices of step length α. A step of unity along $${\widehat{d}}_k$$ is the exact step to the minimum of the function restricted to the null space of $${\overline{A}}_k$$. If such a step can be taken, without violation of the constraints, then this is the solution to QP (Equation 8-9). Otherwise, the step along $${\widehat{d}}_k$$ to the nearest constraint is less than unity and a new constraint is included in the active set at the next iteration. The distance to the constraint boundaries in any direction $${\widehat{d}}_k$$ is given by

which is defined for constraints not in the active set, and where the direction $${\widehat{d}}_k$$ is towards the constraint boundary, i.e., $$A_i{\widehat{d}}_k>0,i=1,\mathrm{...},m$$.

When n independent constraints are included in the active set, without location of the minimum, Lagrange multipliers, λ_k, are calculated that satisfy the nonsingular set of linear equations

If all elements of λ_k are positive, x_k is the optimal solution of QP (Equation 8-9). However, if any component of λ_k is negative, and the component does not correspond to an equality constraint, then the corresponding element is deleted from the active set and a new iterate is sought.

Initialization

The algorithm requires a feasible point to start. If the current point from the SQP method is not feasible, then you can find a point by solving the linear programming problem

The notation A_i indicates the ith row of the matrix A. You can find a feasible point (if one exists) to Equation 8-15 by setting x to a value that satisfies the equality constraints. You can determine this value by solving an under- or overdetermined set of linear equations formed from the set of equality constraints. If there is a solution to this problem, then the slack variable γ is set to the maximum inequality constraint at this point.

You can modify the preceding QP algorithm for LP problems by setting the search direction to the steepest descent direction at each iteration, where g_k is the gradient of the objective function (equal to the coefficients of the linear objective function).

If a feasible point is found using the preceding LP method, the main QP phase is entered. The search direction $${\widehat{d}}_k$$ is initialized with a search direction $${\widehat{d}}_1$$ found from solving the set of linear equations

where g_k is the gradient of the objective function at the current iterate x_k (i.e., Hx_k + c).

If a feasible solution is not found for the QP problem, the direction of search for the main SQP routine is taken as one that minimizes γ.

linprog Simplex Algorithm

The simplex algorithm, invented by George Dantzig in 1947, is one of the earliest and best known optimization algorithms. The algorithm solves the linear programming problem

$$\underset{x}{\min }{f}^{T}x\text{ such that }\{\begin{array}{c}A\cdot x\le b,\\ Aeq\cdot x=beq,\\ lb\le x\le ub.\end{array}$$

The algorithm moves along the edges of the polyhedron defined by the constraints, from one vertex to another, while decreasing the value of the objective function, f^Tx, at each step. This section describes an improved version of the original simplex algorithm that returns a vertex optimal solution.

This section covers the following topics:

• Main Algorithm

• Preprocessing

• Using the Simplex Algorithm

• Basic and Nonbasic Variables

Main Algorithm

The simplex algorithm has two phases:

• Phase 1 — Compute an initial basic feasible point.

• Phase 2 — Compute the optimal solution to the original problem.

Note   You cannot supply an initial point x0 for linprog with the simplex algorithm. If you pass in x0 as an input argument, linprog ignores x0 and computes its own initial point for the algorithm.

Phase 1.  In phase 1, the algorithm finds an initial basic feasible solution (see Basic and Nonbasic Variables for a definition) by solving an auxiliary piecewise linear programming problem. The objective function of the auxiliary problem is the linear penalty function $$P={\displaystyle \sum _j{P}_j\left(x_j\right)}$$,

where P_j(x_j) is defined by

$$P_j\left(x_j\right)=\{\begin{array}{ll}{x}_j-u_j\hfill & \text{if }{x}_j>u_j\hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{if }{l}_j\le x_j\le u_j\hfill \\ l_j-x_j\hfill & \text{if }{l}_j>x_j.\hfill \end{array}$$

P(x) measures how much a point x violates the lower and upper bound conditions. The auxiliary problem is

$$\underset{x}{\min }{\displaystyle \sum _j{P}_j}\text{ subject to }\{\begin{array}{c}A\cdot x\le b\\ Aeq\cdot x=beq.\end{array}$$

The original problem has a feasible basis point if and only if the auxiliary problem has minimum value 0.

The algorithm finds an initial point for the auxiliary problem by a heuristic method that adds slack and artificial variables as necessary. The algorithm then uses this initial point together with the simplex algorithm to solve the auxiliary problem. The solution is the initial point for phase 2 of the main algorithm.

Phase 2.  In phase 2, the algorithm applies the simplex algorithm, starting at the initial point from phase 1, to solve the original problem. At each iteration, the algorithm tests the optimality condition and stops if the current solution is optimal. If the current solution is not optimal, the algorithm

1. Chooses one variable, called the entering variable, from the nonbasic variables and adds the corresponding column of the nonbasis to the basis (see Basic and Nonbasic Variables for definitions).

2. Chooses a variable, called the leaving variable, from the basic variables and removes the corresponding column from the basis.

3. Updates the current solution and the current objective value.

The algorithm chooses the entering and the leaving variables by solving two linear systems while maintaining the feasibility of the solution.

The algorithm detects when there is no progress in the Phase 2 solution process. It attempts to continue by performing bound perturbation. For an explanation of this part of the algorithm, see Applegate, Bixby, Chvatal, and Cook [59].

Preprocessing

The simplex algorithm uses the same preprocessing steps as the interior-point linear programming solver, which are described in Preprocessing. In addition, the algorithm uses two other steps:

1. Eliminates columns that have only one nonzero element and eliminates their corresponding rows.

2. For each constraint equation a·x = b, where a is a row of Aeq, the algorithm computes the lower and upper bounds of the linear combination a·x as rlb and rub if the lower and upper bounds are finite. If either rlb or rub equals b, the constraint is called a forcing constraint. The algorithm sets each variable corresponding to a nonzero coefficient of a·x equal to its upper or lower bound, depending on the forcing constraint. The algorithm then deletes the columns corresponding to these variables and deletes the rows corresponding to the forcing constraints.

Using the Simplex Algorithm

To use the simplex method, set the Algorithm option to 'simplex' using optimoptions.

options = optimoptions(@linprog,'Algorithm','simplex');

Then call linprog with the options input argument. See the reference page for linprog for more information.

linprog returns empty output arguments for x and fval if it detects infeasibility or unboundedness in the preprocessing procedure. linprog returns the current point when it

• Exceeds the maximum number of iterations

• Detects that the problem is infeasible or unbounded in phases 1 or 2

When the problem is unbounded, linprog returns x and fval in the unbounded direction.

Basic and Nonbasic Variables

This section defines the terms basis, nonbasis, and basic feasible solutions for a linear programming problem. The definition assumes that the problem is given in the following standard form:

$$\underset{x}{\min }{f}^{T}x\text{ such that }\{\begin{array}{c}A\cdot x=b,\\ lb\le x\le ub.\end{array}$$

(Note that A and b are not the matrix and vector defining the inequalities in the original problem.) Assume that A is an m-by-n matrix, of rank m < n, whose columns are {a₁, a₂, ..., a_n}. Suppose that $$\left\{a_{i_1},a_{i_2},\mathrm{...},a_{i_m}\right\}$$ is a basis for the column space of A, with index set B = {i₁, i₂, ..., i_m}, and that N = {1, 2, ..., n}\B is the complement of B. The submatrix A_B is called a basis and the complementary submatrix A_N is called a nonbasis. The vector of basic variables is x_B and the vector of nonbasic variables is x_N. At each iteration in phase 2, the algorithm replaces one column of the current basis with a column of the nonbasis and updates the variables x_B and x_N accordingly.

If x is a solution to A·x = b and all the nonbasic variables in x_N are equal to either their lower or upper bounds, x is called a basic solution. If, in addition, the basic variables in x_B satisfy their lower and upper bounds, so that x is a feasible point, x is called a basic feasible solution.

Dual-Simplex Algorithm

At a high level, the linprog 'dual-simplex' algorithm essentially performs a simplex algorithm on the dual problem.

The algorithm begins by preprocessing as described in Preprocessing. For details, see Andersen and Andersen [1] and Nocedal and Wright [6], Chapter 13. This preprocessing reduces the original linear programming problem to the form of Equation 8-4:

$$\underset{x}{\min }{f}^{T}x\text{ such that }\{\begin{array}{c}A\cdot x=b\\ 0\le x\le u.\end{array}$$

A and b are transformed versions of the original constraint matrices. This is the primal problem.

As explained in Equation 8-6, the dual problem is to find vectors y and w, and a slack variable vector z that solve

$$\max b^{T}y-u^{T}w\text{ such that }\{\begin{array}{c}{A}^T\cdot y-w+z=f\\ z\ge 0,w\ge 0.\end{array}$$

It is well known (for example, see [6]) that any finite solution of the dual problem gives a solution to the primal problem, and any finite solution of the primal problem gives a solution of the dual problem. Furthermore, if either the primal or dual problem is unbounded, then the other problem is infeasible. And if either the primal or dual problem is infeasible, then the other problem is either infeasible or unbounded. Therefore, the two problems are equivalent in terms of obtaining a finite solution, if one exists. Because the primal and dual problems are mathematically equivalent, but the computational steps differ, it can be better to solve the primal problem by solving the dual problem.

To help alleviate degeneracy (see Nocedal and Wright [6], page 366), the dual simplex algorithm begins by perturbing the objective function.

Phase 1 of the dual simplex algorithm is to find a dual feasible point. The algorithm does this by solving an auxiliary linear programming problem, similar to Phase 1 for the simplex algorithm.

During Phase 2, the solver repeatedly chooses an entering variable and a leaving variable, analogously to Phase 2 for the primal simplex algorithm. The algorithm chooses a leaving variable according to a technique suggested by Forrest and Goldfarb [2] called dual steepest-edge pricing. The algorithm chooses an entering variable using the variation of Harris' ratio test suggested by Koberstein [4]. To help alleviate degeneracy, the algorithm can introduce additional perturbations during Phase 2.

The solver iterates, attempting to maintain dual feasibility while reducing primal infeasibility, until the solution to the reduced, perturbed problem is both primal feasible and dual feasible. The algorithm unwinds the perturbations that it introduced. If the solution (to the perturbed problem) is dual infeasible for the unperturbed (original) problem, then the solver restores dual feasibility using primal simplex or Phase 1 algorithms. Finally, the solver unwinds the preprocessing steps to return the solution to the original problem.