Worst case approach in convex minimization problems with uncertain data

Abstract

This paper concerns quantitative analysis of errors generated by incompletely known data in convex minimization problems. The problems are discussed in the mixed setting and the duality gap is used as the fundamental error measure. The influence of the indeterminate data is measured using the worst case scenario approach. The worst case error is decomposed into two computable quantities, which allows the quantitative comparison between errors resulting from the inaccuracy of the approximation and the data uncertainty. The proposed approach is demonstrated on a paradigm of a nonlinear reaction-diffusion problem together with numerical examples.