Exercise · ZW-LINE-SEARCH-010 · ★★★ Advanced

Which statement about line search is false?

Choose one option.

Show answer
  • A. A step that satisfies Armijo is always the exact minimizer of \(f\) along the line \(x_k+\alpha p_k\).

Explanation

Armijo only asks for a sufficient decrease, so an accepted step need not be the exact minimizer. With \(f(x)=x^2\), \(x_k=1\), \(p_k=-2\) and \(c_1=0.5\), the step \(\tfrac14\) satisfies the condition, but the minimum is at \(\tfrac12\).

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Review the concept: Line search

Line search is a procedure that chooses the step size \(\alpha\) along a descent direction \(p_k\) to reduce the value of the objective function.

\[f(x_k+\alpha p_k)\le f(x_k)+c_1\alpha\nabla f(x_k)^\top p_k\]

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