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Solving a linear optimization problem on incentive allocation

eng.lyft.com

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Re: Solving a linear optimization problem on incentive allocation

#11

Post by codesushi42 »

1000units wrote: post #10
codesushi42 wrote: post #9

Not very interesting. You see allocation problems solved all of the time in finance, and this blog post doesn't have anything new. I also doubt that it's optimal. An implementation using Hierarchical Risk Parity for instance would be more interesting. I assume you can model risk/uncertainty here. By the way, Google has an OR tools framework that implements these kind of solvers for you: https://developers.google.com/…

Uninteresting comment. You see critical, speculative comments that offer no technical insight on Hacker News all the time. I also doubt the article was read. Demonstrating actual effort and understanding would be more interesting.

What kind of insight did you want? Simply Google "portfolio optimization" and you will find many more interesting techniques.

This is a basic LP problem that you'll come across in a textbook.

Re: Solving a linear optimization problem on incentive allocation

#12

Post by ltbarcly3 »

codesushi42 wrote: post #9

Not very interesting. You see allocation problems solved all of the time in finance, and this blog post doesn't have anything new. I also doubt that it's optimal. An implementation using Hierarchical Risk Parity for instance would be more interesting. I assume you can model risk/uncertainty here. By the way, Google has an OR tools framework that implements these kind of solvers for you: https://developers.google.com/…

I think you are probably right, this does not seem optimal, it doesn't even seem that they recognized the class of problem that this is? It seems like they are attempting to use a greedy algorithm on a problem which very obviously has local extrema.

Re: Solving a linear optimization problem on incentive allocation

#13

Post by marktani »

codesushi42 wrote: post #11
1000units wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uninteresting comment. You see critical, speculative comments that offer no technical insight on Hacker News all the time. I also doubt the article was read. Demonstrating actual effort and understanding would be more interesting.

What kind of insight did you want? Simply Google "portfolio optimization" and you will find many more interesting techniques. This is a basic LP problem that you'll come across in a textbook.

How many HN readers read about OR before? Haven't read the blog post yet but it seems like a nice way to refresh my knowledge from some obscure lecture I attended about it ~5 years ago ;)

Re: Solving a linear optimization problem on incentive allocation

#14

Post by 1000units »

codesushi42 wrote: post #11
1000units wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uninteresting comment. You see critical, speculative comments that offer no technical insight on Hacker News all the time. I also doubt the article was read. Demonstrating actual effort and understanding would be more interesting.

What kind of insight did you want? Simply Google "portfolio optimization" and you will find many more interesting techniques. This is a basic LP problem that you'll come across in a textbook.

Here's an interesting comment with an interesting reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21336687

By contrast, you effectively said, "Heh, I've seen fancier models. BTW, you can just plug your stuff into Google."

Re: Solving a linear optimization problem on incentive allocation

#16

Post by bulldoa »

codesushi42 wrote: post #9

Not very interesting. You see allocation problems solved all of the time in finance, and this blog post doesn't have anything new. I also doubt that it's optimal. An implementation using Hierarchical Risk Parity for instance would be more interesting. I assume you can model risk/uncertainty here. By the way, Google has an OR tools framework that implements these kind of solvers for you: https://developers.google.com/…

Are there recommended resource for understanding and applying these type of problems? I am quite interested in optimization and its real life application, currently reading linear optimization by bertsekas

Re: Solving a linear optimization problem on incentive allocation

#17

Post by codesushi42 »

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #12
codesushi42 wrote: post #9

Not very interesting. You see allocation problems solved all of the time in finance, and this blog post doesn't have anything new. I also doubt that it's optimal. An implementation using Hierarchical Risk Parity for instance would be more interesting. I assume you can model risk/uncertainty here. By the way, Google has an OR tools framework that implements these kind of solvers for you: https://developers.google.com/…

I think you are probably right, this does not seem optimal, it doesn't even seem that they recognized the class of problem that this is? It seems like they are attempting to use a greedy algorithm on a problem which very obviously has local extrema.

It seems like they are attempting to use a greedy algorithm on a problem which very obviously has local extrema.

Yep. You'll end up with a lopsided allocation, with one or two allocations holding a very large percentage of the total allocation.

Distributing the allocation weights could help, e.g. with ensembling, regularization or some other kind of penalty.

Re: Solving a linear optimization problem on incentive allocation

#18

Post by codesushi42 »

bulldoa wrote: post #16
codesushi42 wrote: post #9

Not very interesting. You see allocation problems solved all of the time in finance, and this blog post doesn't have anything new. I also doubt that it's optimal. An implementation using Hierarchical Risk Parity for instance would be more interesting. I assume you can model risk/uncertainty here. By the way, Google has an OR tools framework that implements these kind of solvers for you: https://developers.google.com/…

Are there recommended resource for understanding and applying these type of problems? I am quite interested in optimization and its real life application, currently reading linear optimization by bertsekas

Take a course on discrete optimization. There's one on Coursera.

Convex optimization is also useful if you care about optimizing convex functions. Which I bet you do.

Re: Solving a linear optimization problem on incentive allocation

#19

Post by benrbray »

s_Hogg wrote: post #2

It's not the most accessible, but it's pretty interesting. Turning a problem into its dual has always been a bit of a dark art to me, but this article makes the benefits of doing so reasonably clear.

I really recommend Tim Roughgarden's notes for understanding duality!

* L7 (Intro): http://timroughgarden.org/w16/l/l7.pdf

* L8 (Duality I): http://timroughgarden.org/w16/l/l8.pdf

* L9 (Duality II: http://timroughgarden.org/w16/l/l9.pdf

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