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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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-07-28 Elad Hazan , Kfir Y. Levy , Shai Shalev-Shwartz

In the paper, we propose solving optimization problems (OPs) and understanding the Newton method from the optimal control view. We propose a new optimization algorithm based on the optimal control problem (OCP). The algorithm features…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-01 Huanshui Zhang , Hongxia Wang

This paper proposes a stochastic gradient descent method with an adaptive Gaussian noise term for the global minimization of nearly convex functions, which are nonconvex and possess multiple strict local minimizers. The noise term,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-08-05 Chenglong Bao , Liang Chen , Weizhi Shao

We present a new accelerated stochastic second-order method that is robust to both gradient and Hessian inexactness, which occurs typically in machine learning. We establish theoretical lower bounds and prove that our algorithm achieves…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-05-28 Artem Agafonov , Dmitry Kamzolov , Alexander Gasnikov , Ali Kavis , Kimon Antonakopoulos , Volkan Cevher , Martin Takáč

Despite their popularity in the field of continuous optimisation, second-order quasi-Newton methods are challenging to apply in machine learning, as the Hessian matrix is intractably large. This computational burden is exacerbated by the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-28 Elre T. Oldewage , Ross M. Clarke , José Miguel Hernández-Lobato

In this work, we develop new optimization algorithms that use approximate second-order information combined with the gradient regularization technique to achieve fast global convergence rates for both convex and non-convex objectives. The…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-06-17 Andrei Semenov , Martin Jaggi , Nikita Doikov

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,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-12 Dimitris Boskos , Jorge Cortés , Sonia Martínez

In this paper, we investigate a second-order stochastic algorithm for solving large-scale binary classification problems. We propose to make use of a new hybrid stochastic Newton algorithm that includes two weighted components in the…

Computation · Statistics 2025-12-02 Bernard Bercu , Luis Fredes , Eméric Gbaguidi

In this paper, we explore two fundamental first-order algorithms in convex optimization, namely, gradient descent (GD) and proximal gradient method (ProxGD). Our focus is on making these algorithms entirely adaptive by leveraging local…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-13 Yura Malitsky , Konstantin Mishchenko

We present an algorithm for minimizing a sum of functions that combines the computational efficiency of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with the second order curvature information leveraged by quasi-Newton methods. We unify these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-12-02 Jascha Sohl-Dickstein , Ben Poole , Surya Ganguli

Policy gradient methods are among the most effective methods in challenging reinforcement learning problems with large state and/or action spaces. However, little is known about even their most basic theoretical convergence properties,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-16 Alekh Agarwal , Sham M. Kakade , Jason D. Lee , Gaurav Mahajan

Quasi-Newton methods are widely used for solving convex optimization problems due to their ease of implementation, practical efficiency, and strong local convergence guarantees. However, their global convergence is typically established…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-08-28 Artem Agafonov , Vladislav Ryspayev , Samuel Horváth , Alexander Gasnikov , Martin Takáč , Slavomir Hanzely

In this paper, a novel stochastic extra-step quasi-Newton method is developed to solve a class of nonsmooth nonconvex composite optimization problems. We assume that the gradient of the smooth part of the objective function can only be…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-10-22 Minghan Yang , Andre Milzarek , Zaiwen Wen , Tong Zhang

We propose the generalized Newton's method (GeN) -- a Hessian-informed approach that applies to any optimizer such as SGD and Adam, and covers the Newton-Raphson method as a sub-case. Our method automatically and dynamically selects the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Zhiqi Bu , Shiyun Xu

We propose a trust region method for policy optimization that employs Quasi-Newton approximation for the Hessian, called Quasi-Newton Trust Region Policy Optimization QNTRPO. Gradient descent is the de facto algorithm for reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-30 Devesh Jha , Arvind Raghunathan , Diego Romeres

A new variant of Newton's method for empirical risk minimization is studied, where at each iteration of the optimization algorithm, the gradient and Hessian of the objective function are replaced by robust estimators taken from existing…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-07-18 Eirini Ioannou , Muni Sreenivas Pydi , Po-Ling Loh

Gaussian processes are a powerful framework for quantifying uncertainty and for sequential decision-making but are limited by the requirement of solving linear systems. In general, this has a cubic cost in dataset size and is sensitive to…

We propose and analyze a stochastic Newton algorithm for homogeneous distributed stochastic convex optimization, where each machine can calculate stochastic gradients of the same population objective, as well as stochastic Hessian-vector…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-10-08 Brian Bullins , Kumar Kshitij Patel , Ohad Shamir , Nathan Srebro , Blake Woodworth

A novel dynamical inertial Newton system, which is called Hessian-driven Nesterov accelerated gradient (H-NAG) flow is proposed. Convergence of the continuous trajectory are established via tailored Lyapunov function, and new first-order…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-12-25 Long Chen , Hao Luo

Newton's method may exhibit slower convergence than vanilla Gradient Descent in its initial phase on strongly convex problems. Classical Newton-type multilevel methods mitigate this but, like Gradient Descent, achieve only linear…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-25 Nick Tsipinakis , Panos Parpas , Matthias Voigt