Journal of Inequalities and Applications 
Volume 2 (1998), Issue 2, Pages 181-194
doi:10.1155/S1025583498000113

A conjugate direction method for approximating the analytic center of a polytope

Masakazu Kojima,1 Nimrod Megiddo,2,3 and Shinji Mizuno4

1Departments of Mathematical and Computing Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152, Japan
2IBM Almaden Research Center, 650 Harry Road, San Jose 95120-6099, Cafifonia, USA
3School of Mathematical Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
4The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, 4-6-7 Minami-Azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106, Japan

Received 21 November 1996

Abstract

The analytic center ω of an n-dimensional polytope P={x∈Rn:aiTx−bi≥0 (i=1,2,⋯,m)} with a nonempty interior Pint is defined as the unique minimizer of the logarithmic potential function F(x)=∑i=1mlog(aiTx−bi) over Pint. It is shown that one cycle of a conjugate direction method, applied to the potential function at any v∈Pint such that ε=(v−ω)T∇2F(ω)(v−ω)≤1/6, generates a point xˆ∈Pint such that (xˆ−ω)T∇2F(ω)(xˆ−ω)≤23nε2 .