Related papers: A Stochastic Smoothing Algorithm for Semidefinite …
In this paper, we study and analyze zeroth-order stochastic approximation algorithms for solving bilvel problems, when neither the upper/lower objective values, nor their unbiased gradient estimates are available. In particular, exploiting…
We derive a stochastic gradient algorithm for semidefinite optimization using randomization techniques. The algorithm uses subsampling to reduce the computational cost of each iteration and the subsampling ratio explicitly controls…
We consider the unconstrained optimization problem whose objective function is composed of a smooth and a non-smooth conponents where the smooth component is the expectation a random function. This type of problem arises in some interesting…
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…
We show that the optimal complexity of Nesterov's smooth first-order optimization algorithm is preserved when the gradient is only computed up to a small, uniformly bounded error. In applications of this method to semidefinite programs,…
This paper formalizes and analyzes Gaussian smoothing applied to two prominent optimization methods: Stochastic Gradient Descent (GSmoothSGD) and Adam (GSmoothAdam) in deep learning. By attenuating small fluctuations, Gaussian smoothing…
In this paper we analyze a zeroth-order proximal stochastic gradient method suitable for the minimization of weakly convex stochastic optimization problems. We consider nonsmooth and nonlinear stochastic composite problems, for which…
In this work, we consider convex optimization problems with smooth objective function and nonsmooth functional constraints. We propose a new stochastic gradient algorithm, called Stochastic Halfspace Approximation Method (SHAM), to solve…
We study the foundations of variational inference, which frames posterior inference as an optimisation problem, for probabilistic programming. The dominant approach for optimisation in practice is stochastic gradient descent. In particular,…
We propose a novel stochastic smoothing accelerated gradient (SSAG) method for general constrained nonsmooth convex composite optimization, and analyze the convergence rates. The SSAG method allows various smoothing techniques, and can deal…
In this paper, we discuss the problem of minimizing the sum of two convex functions: a smooth function plus a non-smooth function. Further, the smooth part can be expressed by the average of a large number of smooth component functions, and…
The graduated optimization approach is a method for finding global optimal solutions for nonconvex functions by using a function smoothing operation with stochastic noise. This paper makes three contributions regarding graduated…
This paper considers non-smooth optimization problems where we seek to minimize the pointwise maximum of a continuously parameterized family of functions. Since the objective function is given as the solution to a maximization problem,…
We consider stochastic smoothing of spectral functions of matrices using perturbations commonly studied in random matrix theory. We show that a spectral function remains spectral when smoothed using a unitarily invariant perturbation…
We present the first q-Gaussian smoothed functional (SF) estimator of the Hessian and the first Newton-based stochastic optimization algorithm that estimates both the Hessian and the gradient of the objective function using q-Gaussian…
We consider stochastic variational inequality problems where the mapping is monotone over a compact convex set. We present two robust variants of stochastic extragradient algorithms for solving such problems. Of these, the first scheme…
We study properties and algorithms of a minimization problem of the maximum generalized eigenvalue of symmetric-matrix-valued affine functions, which is nonsmooth and quasiconvex, and has application to eigenfrequency optimization of truss…
This paper proposes a novel technique called "successive stochastic smoothing" that optimizes nonsmooth and discontinuous functions while considering various constraints. Our methodology enables local and global optimization, making it a…
This paper focuses on stochastic proximal gradient methods for optimizing a smooth non-convex loss function with a non-smooth non-convex regularizer and convex constraints. To the best of our knowledge we present the first non-asymptotic…
Stochastic gradient descent type methods are ubiquitous in machine learning, but they are only applicable to the optimization of differentiable functions. Proximal algorithms are more general and applicable to nonsmooth functions. We…