Optimisation via Slice Sampling

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a simulation-based approach to optimisation with multi-modal functions using slice sampling. Our method specifies the objective function as an energy potential in a Boltzmann distribution and then we use auxiliary exponential slice variables to provide samples for a variety of energy levels. Our slice sampler draws uniformly over the augmented slice region. We identify the global modes by projecting the path of the chain back to the underlying space. Four standard test functions are used to illustrate the methodology: Rosenbrock, Himmelblau, Rastrigin, and Shubert. These functions demonstrate the flexibility of our approach as they include functions with long ridges (Rosenbrock), multi-modality (Himmelblau, Shubert) and many local modes dominated by one global (Rastrigin). The methods described here are implemented in the {\tt R} package {\tt McmcOpt}.