Using Simulated Annealing to Solve Controlled Rounding Problems
James Pepper Kelly, Bruce Golden, Arjang A. Assad · INFORMS journal on computing · 1990
Controlled rounding is a procedure whereby tabular data gathered from respondents is perturbed in such a way as to preserve the anonymity of the respondents while maintaining the integrity of the data. This paper describes an algorithm for solving three-dimensional controlled rounding problems which is based on simulated annealing, linear programming, and binary search procedures. Numerical results obtained from processing 32,500 randomly generated tables and 292 real-life tables have demonstrated that this algorithm can efficiently find controlled roundings, provided they exist. The algorithm is significantly faster than any previously known solution procedure for this class of problems. INFORMS Journal on Computing, ISSN 1091-9856, was published as ORSA Journal on Computing from 1989 to 1995 under ISSN 0899-1499.