Fractional optimization ======================= This notebook shows how to solve a simple *concave fractional problem*, in which the objective is to maximize the ratio of a nonnegative concave function and a positive convex function. Concave fractional problems are quasiconvex programs (QCPs). They can be specified using disciplined quasiconvex programming (`DQCP `__), and hence can be solved using CVXPY. .. code:: !pip install --upgrade cvxpy .. code:: import cvxpy as cp import numpy as np import matplotlib.pyplot as plt Our goal is to maximize the function .. math:: \frac{\sqrt{x}}{\exp(x)}. This function is not concave, but it is quasiconcave, as can be seen by inspecting its graph. .. code:: plt.plot([np.sqrt(y) / np.exp(y) for y in np.linspace(0, 10)]) plt.show() .. image:: concave_fractional_function_files/concave_fractional_function_4_0.png The below code specifies and solves the QCP, using DQCP. The concave fraction function is DQCP-compliant, because the ratio atom is quasiconcave (actually, quasilinear), increasing in the numerator when the denominator is positive, and decreasing in the denominator when the numerator is nonnegative. .. code:: x = cp.Variable() concave_fractional_fn = cp.sqrt(x) / cp.exp(x) problem = cp.Problem(cp.Maximize(concave_fractional_fn)) assert problem.is_dqcp() problem.solve(qcp=True) .. parsed-literal:: 0.4288821220397949 .. code:: x.value .. parsed-literal:: array(0.50000165)