I tried to solve a rather simple optimization problem, which Mathematica apparently cannot handle. A minimal example is the following:
Minimize[{a^2*Exp[-b^2], b > 0}, a, Reals]
(* Minimize[{a^2 E^-b^2, b > 0}, a, Reals] *)
Obviously, the answer should have been {0, {a -> 0}}
. The minimization works when I drop the exponential term. My Mathematica version is 10.2.0 for Mac OS X x86 (64-bit) (July 29, 2015)
.
Are there any options I need to set to aid Mathematica in solving the above minimization or is this simply a bug, which I should report to Wolfram?
NMinimize
. $\endgroup$ – b.gates.you.know.what Aug 4 '15 at 13:48Minimize
will handle it. $\endgroup$ – b.gates.you.know.what Aug 4 '15 at 15:06a
, the parameter I optimize for. It would be sufficient if the function realizes that the factorExp[-b^2]
is non-negative. $\endgroup$ – David Zwicker Aug 4 '15 at 15:13Exp[-b^2]
withc
, then you get an answer (although if you put in the constraintc > 0
, that seems to be ignored). As @b.gatessucks states, Minimize seems to only deal with polynomials and I vaguely remember responses either here or a commmunity.wolfram.com stating so. $\endgroup$ – JimB Aug 4 '15 at 18:22