Bayesian Optimization

Bayesian Optimization is a sequential, model-based strategy for finding the optimum of expensive black-box functions with as few evaluations as possible. Rooted in the work of Mockus (1975) and brought to mainstream machine-learning practice by Snoek, Larochelle, and Adams (2012), it fits a probabilistic surrogate model — typically a Gaussian Process — to past observations and uses an acquisition function to decide where to probe next, balancing exploration of unknown regions with exploitation of promising ones.