Ellipsoid method

Iterative method for minimizing convex functions

In mathematical optimization, the ellipsoid method is an iterative method for minimizing convex functions over convex sets. The ellipsoid method generates a sequence of ellipsoids whose volume uniformly decreases at every step, thus enclosing a minimizer of a convex function. When specialized to solving feasible linear optimization problems with rational data, the ellipsoid method is an algorithm which finds an optimal solution in a number of steps that is polynomial in the input size.

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