Diagnostic Tools for Evaluating and Comparing Simulation- Optimization Algorithms Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Simulation optimization involves optimizing some objective function that can only be estimated via stochastic simulation. Many important problems can be profitably viewed within this framework. Whereas many solversimplementations of simulation-optimization algorithmsexist or are in development, comparisons among solvers are not standardized and are often limited in scope. Such comparisons help advance solver development, clarify the relative performance of solvers, and identify classes of problems that defy efficient solution, among many other uses. We develop performance measures and plots, and estimators thereof, to evaluate and compare solvers and diagnose their strengths and weaknesses on a testbed of simulation-optimization problems. We explain the need for two-level simulation in this context and provide supporting convergence theory. We also describe how to use bootstrapping to obtain error estimates for the estimators. History: Accepted by Bruno Tuffin, area editor for simulation. Funding: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [Grants CMMI-2035086, CMMI-2206972, and TRIPODS+X DMS-1839346]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplementary Information [ https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.1261 ] or is available from the IJOC GitHub software repository ( https://github.com/INFORMSJoC ) at [ http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7329235 ].

published proceedings

  • INFORMS JOURNAL ON COMPUTING

author list (cited authors)

  • Eckman, D. J., Henderson, S. G., & Shashaani, S.

citation count

  • 1

complete list of authors

  • Eckman, David J||Henderson, Shane G||Shashaani, Sara

publication date

  • March 2023