Related papers: An approximation algorithm for counting contingenc…
Majorization-minimization algorithms consist of iteratively minimizing a majorizing surrogate of an objective function. Because of its simplicity and its wide applicability, this principle has been very popular in statistics and in signal…
We prove lower bounds for higher-order methods in smooth non-convex finite-sum optimization. Our contribution is threefold: We first show that a deterministic algorithm cannot profit from the finite-sum structure of the objective, and that…
The pseudo-marginal algorithm is a popular variant of the Metropolis--Hastings scheme which allows us to sample asymptotically from a target probability density $\pi$, when we are only able to estimate an unnormalized version of $\pi$…
We propose a stochastic approximation method for approximating the efficient frontier of chance-constrained nonlinear programs. Our approach is based on a bi-objective viewpoint of chance-constrained programs that seeks solutions on the…
Today, data analysts largely rely on intuition to determine whether missing or withheld rows of a dataset significantly affect their analyses. We propose a framework that can produce automatic contingency analysis, i.e., the range of values…
We present a randomized algorithm that computes a constant approximation of a graph's arboricity, using $\tilde{O}(n/\lambda)$ queries to adjacency lists and in the same time bound. Here, $n$ and $\lambda$ denote the number of nodes and the…
In this study, we investigate the problem of classifying, characterizing, and designing efficient algorithms for hard inference problems on planar graphs, in the limit of infinite size. The problem is considered hard if, for a deterministic…
We give efficient algorithms for volume sampling, i.e., for picking $k$-subsets of the rows of any given matrix with probabilities proportional to the squared volumes of the simplices defined by them and the origin (or the squared volumes…
Many streaming algorithms provide only a high-probability relative approximation. These two relaxations, of allowing approximation and randomization, seem necessary -- for many streaming problems, both relaxations must be employed…
We present a new algorithm for finding a near optimal low-rank approximation of a matrix $A$ in $O(nnz(A))$ time. Our method is based on a recursive sampling scheme for computing a representative subset of $A$'s columns, which is then used…
Randomized SVD has become an extremely successful approach for efficiently computing a low-rank approximation of matrices. In particular the paper by Halko, Martinsson, and Tropp (SIREV 2011) contains extensive analysis, and has made it a…
We propose a novel study of the stochastic proximal gradient method for minimizing the sum of two convex functions, one of which is smooth. Under suitable assumptions and without requiring any boundedness or control of the variance of the…
A method based on multicanonical Monte Carlo is applied to the calculation of large deviations in the largest eigenvalue of random matrices. The method is successfully tested with the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble (GOE), sparse random…
This paper considers the problem of cardinality estimation in data stream applications. We present a statistical analysis of probabilistic counting algorithms, focusing on two techniques that use pseudo-random variates to form…
Stochastic approximation Monte Carlo (SAMC) has recently been proposed by Liang, Liu and Carroll [J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 102 (2007) 305--320] as a general simulation and optimization algorithm. In this paper, we propose to improve its…
We review the basic outline of the highly successful diffusion Monte Carlo technique commonly used in contexts ranging from electronic structure calculations to rare event simulation and data assimilation, and propose a new class of…
We improve on random sampling techniques for approximately solving problems that involve cuts and flows in graphs. We give a near-linear-time construction that transforms any graph on n vertices into an O(n\log n)-edge graph on the same…
Randomized sampling has recently been demonstrated to be an efficient technique for computing approximate low-rank factorizations of matrices for which fast methods for computing matrix vector products are available. This paper describes an…
We consider the problem of selecting non-zero entries of a matrix $A$ in order to produce a sparse sketch of it, $B$, that minimizes $\|A-B\|_2$. For large $m \times n$ matrices, such that $n \gg m$ (for example, representing $n$…
We analyze convergence rates of stochastic optimization procedures for non-smooth convex optimization problems. By combining randomized smoothing techniques with accelerated gradient methods, we obtain convergence rates of stochastic…