Iterative Optimizers: Difficulty Measures and Benchmarks

This book presents the theoretical analysis and practical methods (along with source codes) necessary to estimate the difficulty of problems in a test set, as well as to build bespoke test sets consisting of problems with varied difficulties.

The book formally establishes a typology of optimization problems, from which a reliable test set can be deduced. At the same time, it highlights how classic test sets are skewed in favor of different classes of problems, and how, as a result, optimizers that have performed well on test problems may perform poorly in real life scenarios.