Low-variance gradient estimation is crucial for learning directed graphical models parameterized by neural networks, where the reparameterization trick is widely used for those with continuous variables. While this technique gives low-variance gradient estimates, it has not been directly applicable to discrete variables, the sampling of which inherently requires discontinuous operations. We arg...

For a particular decision situation, the analyst must assign a distribution to each random variable. One method is to perform repeated replications of the experiment. Statistical analysis provides estimates of the probability of each possible occurrence. Another, and often more practical method, is to identify the distribution to be one of the named distributions. It is much easier to estimate ...

This paper offers an approach that could be useful for diverse types of layout problems or even area allocation problems. By this approach there is no need to large number of discrete variables and only by few continues variables large-scale layout problems could be solved in polynomial time. This is resulted from dividing area into discrete and continuous dimensions. Also defining decision var...

Optimum design of structures is achieved while the design variables are continuous and discrete. To reduce the computational work involved in the optimization process, all the functions that are expensive to evaluate, are approximated. To approximate these functions, a semi quadratic function is employed. Only the diagonal terms of the Hessian matrix are used and these elements are estimated fr...