Formatting Optimization Problems with LaTeX

Constrained optimization problems are almost everywhere in engineering research. A mathematical description of those problems with a single objective is to minimize or maximize an objective function over a set of decision variables under a set of constraints. There are different ways to format optimization problems; personally, I follow the format used in the book “Convex Optimization” by Stephen Boyd and Lieven Vandenberghe. For example, a general optimization problem has the form

This is generated by the following code:

\begin{equation*}
\begin{aligned}
& \underset{x}{\text{minimize}}
& & f_0(x) \\
& \text{subject to}
& & f_i(x) \leq b_i, \; i = 1, \ldots, m.
\end{aligned}
\end{equation*}

As seen in the code, the formatting is done by the aligned environment, which is defined in the amsmath package, so you need to include the following line in the preamble:

\usepackage{amsmath}

Unlike the tabular environment, in which you can specify the alignment of each column, in the aligned environment, each column (separated by &) has a default alignment, which alternates between right and left-aligned. Therefore, all the odd columns are right-aligned and all the even columns are left-aligned.

We conclude with a real example:

The above problem is formulated for completing low-rank positive semidefinite matrices. It is convex, or more precisely, it is a semidefinite program.  The corresponding code is

\begin{equation*}
\begin{aligned}
& \underset{X}{\text{minimize}}
& & \mathrm{trace}(X) \\
& \text{subject to}
& & X_{ij} = M_{ij}, \; (i,j) \in \Omega, \\
&&& X \succeq 0.
\end{aligned}
\end{equation*}

Recently, Mr. Garcia has brought to my attention a very neat  package that he has contributed: optidef. The package documentation has all the details, and he has also provided some quick examples. I’d definitely recommend this package since its syntax aligns with how you define instead of how you format an optimization problem, which I assume that most people would prefer.