Can bayesopt() be run without an objective function call?

I have a list of initial X values and initial objectives, as well as variable ranges and parameters, but would like to just extract the next suggested point to sample with bayesObject('NextPoint'), because the evaluation is not a function I can easily put into MATLAB. I attempted to make a dummy function with the correct number of inputs and set 'MaxObjectiveEvaluations' to 0 to avoid any actual function calls:

   bayesObject = bayesopt(dummyFunc,var1,'InitialX',initialXList,'InitialObjective',initialObjList,'MaxObjectiveEvaluations',0);

but received the error

Error using bayesoptim.BayesoptOptions/checkAndFillStoppingCriteria (line X)
'MaxObjectiveEvaluations' must be a positive integer.

Can the 'NextPoint' property be called without ever calling the dummy function? Alternatively, is there a different function I should be using rather than bayesopt() for this?

Answer 1

[Don Mathis]

How about this?

• The objective function returns 0 but is never called.
• The initial points are counted as objective evaluations and so you can set MaxObjectiveEvaluations to 1 and no evaluations will actually occur.
• Plotting and Verbose are turned off so it's fast and silent. (Takes about 0.1 seconds on my machine).

rng(0)

var1 = optimizableVariable('X', [-1,1]);
initialXList = table;
initialXList.X = rand(5,1)*2 - 1;
initialObjList = initialXList.X .^2;
dummyFunc = @(Tbl)0;

bayesObject = bayesopt(dummyFunc,var1,...
    'InitialX',initialXList,...
    'InitialObjective',initialObjList,...
    'MaxObjectiveEvaluations',1, ...
    'PlotFcn',{},...
    'Verbose',0);

bayesObject.NextPoint

[David Freiberg]

This worked perfectly - I didn't realize that 'InitialX' counted towards the number of function evaluations. Thank you very much.

[xu supeng]

Could you help me to see my Question, I followed your method to write a program, but it seems the final result is related to the objective function value(for example if I set dummyFunc = @(Tbl)0 or dummyFunc = @(Tbl)100 the final results are different), but here you say the objective function is never called, here is my question,

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/553393-how-to-use-bayesopt-function-to-predict-the-optimal-parameters-for-the-experiment