How Near is a Near-Optimal Solution: Confidence Limits for the Global Optimum

摘要

For many optimization problems approximate or near-optimal solutions are the only practical solutions available. This paper identifies and compares some procedures which use independent near-optimal solutions to determine a confidence limit such that, with a user specified confidence, the global optimum is between the best near-optimal solution and the confidence limit. A computer implementation of the procedures is available from the authors. (Author)