The paper presents a unified taxonomy that classifies machine‑learning and artificial‑intelligence applications according to mathematical programming paradigms such as linear, quadratic, mixed‑integer, conic, bilevel, and others. It standardizes notation, identifies key inputs, decision variables, and principal formulations for each application, and discusses structural properties, solution strategies, and limitations. The authors compare tractability, relaxation quality, decomposition, approximation guarantees, and scalability across paradigms, emphasizing that mathematical programming serves as a disciplined interface between predictions and constrained decisions rather than a universal modeling claim.
arXiv:2606. 00002v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) decision engines routinely output nominally optimal plans for high-stakes industrial systems.
arXiv:2608. 09707v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Embedding trained neural networks as surrogates within optimisation problems is an established practice in operations research.
CG4AI is a column generation framework that trains AI models while enforcing linear constraints on their outputs. It constructs a convex combination of models, using a master linear program to set mixture weights and a pricing subproblem to generate new models guided by dual variables, focusing on the most violated constraints. The method is applied to MNIST digit classification—demonstrating constraint learning, adversarial robustness, error correction, and output relabeling—and to multi‑commodity flow routing, achieving feasible predictors with higher accuracy than single‑model baselines.
arXiv:2606. 08797v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Decision-focused learning has shown great promise for addressing predict-then-optimize problems, particularly in the presence of under-specified models.
arXiv:2610.09890v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Inverse optimization estimates the weights of an objective function that explain observed decisions as optimal solutions, and is used in a variety of...
The paper introduces ReMILP, a reformulation‑contrastive learning framework that uses self‑supervision from equivalent formulations of mixed‑integer linear programs (MILPs). By distinguishing re‑descriptions and substitutions, the method trains a graph neural network and a hypernetwork to predict how variable embeddings transform under changes of variables, achieving invariance and equivariance without solver‑derived labels. The learned representations prove useful for tasks such as binary solution, constraint activity, and integrality gap prediction, and serve as a strong initialization for fine‑tuning.
arXiv:2604. 23053v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Mixed Binary Quadratic Programs (MBQPs) are an important and complex set of problems in combinatorial optimization.
The paper introduces PolyFormer, a physics-informed machine learning framework that learns compact polytopic representations of complex constraints. By transforming constraint-induced geometry into efficient polytopic reformulations, PolyFormer reduces optimization complexity and enables the use of standard solvers. Evaluations on large‑scale resource aggregation, network‑constrained optimization, and uncertainty‑aware optimization show up to 6,400‑fold speedups and 99.87% memory savings while keeping feasibility and objective errors low.
arXiv:2512. 02494v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Differentiable optimization layers enable learning systems to make decisions by solving embedded optimization problems.
The paper introduces AutoConvexRelax, a learning-based framework that automates the design of convex relaxations for nonconvex optimization problems. By representing a problem as a tripartite graph of variables, symbolic terms, and objective/constraint positions, the method learns a policy to compose symbolic rewrites that generate valid relaxation trajectories. Experiments on quadratic and fractional problems show that the learned policy improves McCormick lower bounds by 13.52% and achieves near‑semidefinite bounds while using smaller formulations.
arXiv:2606. 29725v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In this paper, we formulate a new vehicle dispatch optimization problem, called Nursing Care Taxi Dispatch, as a variant of the Vehicle Routing Problem, considering constraints related to wheelchair use, user compatibility, pick-up and drop-off times, and vehicle limitations.
arXiv:2505. 04757v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: This paper introduces a novel approach to contextual stochastic optimization, integrating operations research and machine learning to address decision-making under uncertainty.