How to force FMINCON to explore a certain range

I am attempting to get fmincon to fit a solution of an ODE to experimental data, based upon a two parameters x and y, where x lies in the region [0,10]. My original guess for x is 7.5, however sometimes FMINCON totally misses the correct minimisation because it doesn't vary x enough, how can I force it to explore this range of [0,10] properly?

Answer 1

[John D'Errico]

No, you cannot force fmincon to fully explore a domain. fmincon is not a global optimizer. It is a local optimizer, that starts from your starting point. If your start point is poor, or the objective is poorly conditioned around there, it will have problems. So get a better starting point!

You can also use multiple random starts, starting it from a set of points. Then take the best result from the set of results.