DASH: Dynamic Approach for Switching Heuristics
  Complete tree search is a highly effective method for tackling MIP problems,
and over the years, a plethora of branching heuristics have been introduced to
further refine the technique for varying problems. Recently, portfolio
algorithms have taken the process a step further, trying to predict the best
heuristic for each instance at hand. However, the motivation behind algorithm
selection can be taken further still, and used to dynamically choose the most
appropriate algorithm for each encountered subproblem. In this paper we
identify a feature space that captures both the evolution of the problem in the
branching tree and the similarity among subproblems of instances from the same
MIP models. We show how to exploit these features to decide the best time to
switch the branching heuristic and then show how such a system can be trained
efficiently. Experiments on a highly heterogeneous collection of MIP instances
show significant gains over the pure algorithm selection approach that for a
given instance uses only a single heuristic throughout the search.
