arXiv:2510.14683cs.AI2025-10AAAI

让算法配置更实用,兼顾理论保证与实际性能。

Practical, Utilitarian Algorithm Configuration

  • 基于效用函数优化参数,灵活适应用户偏好。
  • 改进COUP算法,实测性能媲美主流启发式方法。
  • 支持分析配置对效用函数变化的鲁棒性,适合决策者使用。

效用导向的算法配置旨在为给定算法找到最大化用户效用的参数设置。效用函数在不确定性下的决策优化中具有坚实的理论基础,且能灵活表达用户对算法运行时间的偏好(如解超时即无效、按小时计费的计算成本、或运行时间越长收益越低等)。近期提出的COUP是一种效用导向配置方法,主要强调理论保证,但实际表现较弱。本文填补这一空白,通过一系列改进使COUP在保持理论优势的同时显著提升实际性能,并在实验中验证其有效性。此外,通过案例研究展示了如何评估特定算法选择方案对效用函数变化的鲁棒性。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Utilitarian algorithm configuration identifies a parameter setting for a given algorithm that maximizes a user's utility. Utility functions offer a theoretically well-grounded approach to optimizing decision-making under uncertainty and are flexible enough to capture a user's preferences over algorithm runtimes (e.g., they can describe a sharp cutoff after which a solution is no longer required, a per-hour cost for compute, or diminishing returns from algorithms that take longer to run). COUP is a recently-introduced utilitarian algorithm configuration procedure which was designed mainly to offer strong theoretical guarantees about the quality of the configuration it returns, with less attention paid to its practical performance. This paper closes that gap, bringing theoretically-grounded, utilitarian algorithm configuration to the point where it is competitive with widely used, heuristic configuration procedures that offer no performance guarantees. We present a series of improvements to COUP that improve its empirical performance without degrading its theoretical guarantees and demonstrate their benefit experimentally. Using a case study, we also illustrate ways of exploring the robustness of a given solution to the algorithm selection problem to variations in the utility function.

算法配置效用优化理论与实践

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