Probability Functions Generated by Set-Valued Mappings: A Study of First Order Information

Probability functions appear in constraints of many optimization problems in practice and have become quite popular. Understanding their first-order properties has proven useful, not only theoretically but also in implementable algorithms, giving rise to competitive algorithms in several situations. Probability functions are built up from a random vector belonging to some parameter-dependent subset of the range of that given random vector. In this paper, we investigate first order information of probability functions specified through a convex-valued set-valued application. We provide conditions under which the resulting probability function is indeed locally Lipschitzian. We also provide subgradient formulæ. The resulting formulæ are made concrete in a classic optimization setting and put to work in an illustrative example coming from an energy application.