Optimizing discrete values

[Paeyus]

Hello @jackliu333,
I am currently reading your book, which will hopefully help with the material discovery project I am working on.

1. I would like to find out if it is possible to optimize discrete variables in BoTorch because the code I'm running produces continuous values, though I supply integer bounds.
2. Is it possible to evaluate the value of the objective function from the new candidate points if you are using real data, as you did with the Hartmann function in the book? Thank you

[jackliu333]

Hi,

1. optimizing over discrete variables is typically more challenging. There may be some recent updates from BoTorch that can handle this, see Optimizing over discrete parameter domains pytorch/botorch#177
2. yes, as long as the function that maps real data into a scalar observation output is defined.

[Paeyus]

Thank you