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Identifying Easy Instances to Improve Efficiency of ML Pipelines for Algorithm-Selection

Renau, Quentin; Hart, Emma

Authors



Abstract

Algorithm-selection (AS) methods are essential in order to obtain the best performance from a portfolio of solvers over large sets of instances. However, many AS methods rely on an analysis phase, e.g. where features are computed by sampling solutions and used as input in a machine-learning model. For AS to be efficient, it is therefore important that this analysis phase is not computationally expensive. We propose a method for identifying easy instances which can be solved quickly using a generalist solver without any need for algorithm-selection. This saves computational budget associated with feature-computation which can then be used elsewhere in an AS pipeline, e.g., enabling additional function evaluations on hard problems. Experiments on the BBOB dataset in two settings (batch and streaming) show that identifying easy instances results in substantial savings in function evaluations. Re-allocating the saved budget to hard problems provides gains in performance compared to both the virtual best solver (VBS) computed with the original budget, the single best solver (SBS) and a trained algorithm-selector.

Citation

Renau, Q., & Hart, E. (2024, September). Identifying Easy Instances to Improve Efficiency of ML Pipelines for Algorithm-Selection. Presented at 18th International Conference, PPSN 2024, Hagenberg, Austria

Presentation Conference Type Conference Paper (published)
Conference Name 18th International Conference, PPSN 2024
Start Date Sep 14, 2024
End Date Sep 18, 2024
Online Publication Date Sep 7, 2024
Publication Date 2024
Deposit Date Sep 15, 2024
Publicly Available Date Sep 8, 2025
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Pages 70-86
Series Title Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Series Number 15149
Series ISSN 0302-9743
Book Title Parallel Problem Solving from Nature – PPSN XVIII
ISBN 9783031700675
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-70068-2_5

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