  We propose a new framework for deriving screening rules for convex
optimization problems. Our approach covers a large class of constrained and
penalized optimization formulations, and works in two steps. First, given any
approximate point, the structure of the objective function and the duality gap
is used to gather information on the optimal solution. In the second step, this
information is used to produce screening rules, i.e. safely identifying
unimportant weight variables of the optimal solution. Our general framework
leads to a large variety of useful existing as well as new screening rules for
many applications. For example, we provide new screening rules for general
simplex and $L_1$-constrained problems, Elastic Net, squared-loss Support
Vector Machines, minimum enclosing ball, as well as structured norm regularized
problems, such as group lasso.
