Premise - Design and Criterion Space - Pareto Optimality
Premise - Design and Criterion Space - Pareto Optimality
Premise - Design and Criterion Space - Pareto Optimality
• Premise
• Design and Criterion Space
• Pareto Optimality
The Premise
In Unit 3 (Linear programming), we learned how to
solve problems like this one:
A small business advertises through traditional
media and personal appearances. Each ad
campaign in traditional media costs about $2000,
generating 2 new customers and 1 positive rating
per month. Each personal appearance costs $500,
generating 2 new customers and 5 positive ratings.
The company wants at least 16 new customers and
28 positive ratings per month. Minimize the
advertising costs for this company.
The Premise
Now suppose the company in the previous example
used linear programming to minimize costs, and
found that their optimal solution was to skip
traditional advertising altogether and just make
personal appearances.
Soon, the executives would realize that they were
spending so much time at personal appearances
that they might be tempted to hire another
executive – hardly a way to minimize cost!
The Premise
This sort of scenario plays out quite often and is
called multiobjective optimization. In it, there are
two or more objectives (in this case, minimize cost
AND time) along with constraints.
Frequently, objectives are confused with constraints
when initially framing a problem.
For example, do you really only have 4 hours a week
to spend doing chores? Or is that just a way of
saying you want to minimize time?
Constraints should only be used when there is a
hard, non-negotiable limit on the resource.
Practice Problem 1
Decide if each restriction is best written as a
constraint or an objective:
a) A musician wants to spend at least 4 hours a day
practicing.
b) There are only 8 cups of flour in the pantry.
c) The doorway is only 3 feet wide.
d) A CEO wants at least 5 new contracts this year.
e) An office manager wants to limit the number of
lost staplers to 10 per month.
f) A family must bring in at least $2000 to cover
rent.
Pareto Optimality
One way to find good solutions to multiobjective
problems is with Pareto optimality, named after
economist Vilfredo Pareto.
f1 f1
The blue point minimizes Although orange is on the
both f1 and f2. There is Pareto front, moving to
only one Pareto-optimal purple costs very little f2
solution. for huge gains in f1.
Practice Problem 6
If there is an obvious solution, identify it by
color. If not, write “no obvious solution”.
(goal: minimization) (goal: maximization)
a. d.
b. e.
c. f.