On the Complexity of Optimization Over the Standard Simplex

We review complexity results for minimizing polynomials over the standard simplex and unit hypercube.In addition, we show that there exists a polynomial time approximation scheme (PTAS) for minimizing Lipschitz continuous functions and functions with uniformly bounded Hessians over the standard simplex.This extends an earlier result by De Klerk, Laurent and Parrilo [A PTAS for the minimization of polynomials of fixed degree over the simplex, Theoretical Computer Science, to appear.]