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Many problems of theoretical and practical interest involve finding an optimum over a family of convex functions. For instance, finding the projection on the convex functions in $H^k(\Omega)$, and optimizing functionals arising from some…
A stochastic-gradient-based interior-point algorithm for minimizing a continuously differentiable objective function (that may be nonconvex) subject to bound constraints is presented, analyzed, and demonstrated through experimental results.…
In a real Hilbert space setting, we study the convergence properties of an inexact gradient algorithm featuring both viscous and Hessian driven damping for convex differentiable optimization. In this algorithm, the gradient evaluation can…
This paper presents a randomized algorithm for computing the near-optimal low-rank dynamic mode decomposition (DMD). Randomized algorithms are emerging techniques to compute low-rank matrix approximations at a fraction of the cost of…
Models incorporating uncertain inputs, such as random forces or material parameters, have been of increasing interest in PDE-constrained optimization. In this paper, we focus on the efficient numerical minimization of a convex and smooth…
We analyze two classical algorithms for solving additively composite convex optimization problems where the objective is the sum of a smooth term and a nonsmooth regularizer: proximal stochastic gradient method for a single regularizer; and…
We consider constrained optimization problems with a nonsmooth objective function in the form of mathematical expectation. The Sample Average Approximation (SAA) is used to estimate the objective function and variable sample size strategy…
Convex nonsmooth optimization problems, whose solutions live in very high dimensional spaces, have become ubiquitous. To solve them, the class of first-order algorithms known as proximal splitting algorithms is particularly adequate: they…
We present an optimization algorithm that can identify a global minimum of a potentially nonconvex smooth function with high probability, assuming the Gibbs measure of the potential satisfies a logarithmic Sobolev inequality. Our…
We consider approximate maximum likelihood parameter estimation in nonlinear state-space models. We discuss both direct optimization of the likelihood and expectation--maximization (EM). For EM, we also give closed-form expressions for the…
Datasets with sheer volume have been generated from fields including computer vision, medical imageology, and astronomy whose large-scale and high-dimensional properties hamper the implementation of classical statistical models. To tackle…
We consider semidefinite programs (SDPs) of size n with equality constraints. In order to overcome scalability issues, Burer and Monteiro proposed a factorized approach based on optimizing over a matrix Y of size $n$ by $k$ such that $X =…
This work considers stochastic optimization problems in which the objective function values can only be computed by a blackbox corrupted by some random noise following an unknown distribution. The proposed method is based on sequential…
We consider the problem of computing a positive definite $p \times p$ inverse covariance matrix aka precision matrix $\theta=(\theta_{ij})$ which optimizes a regularized Gaussian maximum likelihood problem, with the elastic-net regularizer…
The graduated optimization approach, also known as the continuation method, is a popular heuristic to solving non-convex problems that has received renewed interest over the last decade. Despite its popularity, very little is known in terms…
The q-Gaussian distribution results from maximizing certain generalizations of Shannon entropy under some constraints. The importance of q-Gaussian distributions stems from the fact that they exhibit power-law behavior, and also generalize…
We propose an algorithm for optimizations in which the gradients contain stochastic noise. This arises, for example, in structural optimizations when computations of forces and stresses rely on methods involving Monte Carlo sampling, such…
Machine learning algorithms in high-dimensional settings are highly susceptible to the influence of even a small fraction of structured outliers, making robust optimization techniques essential. In particular, within the…
Unsupervised aggregation of independently built univariate predictors is explored as an alternative regularization approach for noisy, sparse datasets. Bipartite ranking algorithm Smooth Rank implementing this approach is introduced. The…
The paper considers the problem of network-based computation of global minima in smooth nonconvex optimization problems. It is known that distributed gradient-descent-type algorithms can achieve convergence to the set of global minima by…