Related papers: Query Complexity of Derivative-Free Optimization
We study derivative-free methods for policy optimization over the class of linear policies. We focus on characterizing the convergence rate of these methods when applied to linear-quadratic systems, and study various settings of driving…
In many applications of mathematical optimization, one may wish to optimize an objective function without access to its derivatives. These situations call for derivative-free optimization (DFO) methods. Among the most successful approaches…
The minimization of convex functions which are only available through partial and noisy information is a key methodological problem in many disciplines. In this paper we consider convex optimization with noisy zero-th order information,…
This paper presents a finite difference quasi-Newton method for the minimization of noisy functions. The method takes advantage of the scalability and power of BFGS updating, and employs an adaptive procedure for choosing the differencing…
We consider model-based derivative-free optimization (DFO) for large-scale problems, based on iterative minimization in random subspaces. We provide the first worst-case complexity bound for such methods for convergence to approximate…
Frequently, when dealing with many machine learning models, optimization problems appear to be challenging due to a limited understanding of the constructions and characterizations of the objective functions in these problems. Therefore,…
This paper studies the performative prediction problem where a learner aims to minimize the expected loss with a decision-dependent data distribution. Such setting is motivated when outcomes can be affected by the prediction model, e.g., in…
We study fundamental limits of first-order stochastic optimization in a range of nonconvex settings, including L-smooth functions satisfying Quasar-Convexity (QC), Quadratic Growth (QG), and Restricted Secant Inequalities (RSI). While the…
The assembly of virus capsids from free coat proteins proceeds by a complicated cascade of association and dissociation steps, the great majority of which cannot be directly experimentally observed. This has made capsid assembly a rich…
Bayesian Optimization (BO) is typically used to optimize an unknown function $f$ that is noisy and costly to evaluate, by exploiting an acquisition function that must be maximized at each optimization step. Even if provably asymptotically…
We investigate the convergence properties of a class of iterative algorithms designed to minimize a potentially non-smooth and noisy objective function, which may be algebraically intractable and whose values may be obtained as the output…
Derivative-free - or zeroth-order - optimization (DFO) has gained recent attention for its ability to solve problems in a variety of application areas, including machine learning, particularly involving objectives which are stochastic…
Interest in derivative-free optimization (DFO) and "evolutionary strategies" (ES) has recently surged in the Reinforcement Learning (RL) community, with growing evidence that they can match state of the art methods for policy optimization…
In this paper we study stochastic quasi-Newton methods for nonconvex stochastic optimization, where we assume that noisy information about the gradients of the objective function is available via a stochastic first-order oracle (SFO). We…
In this paper, we analyze several methods for approximating gradients of noisy functions using only function values. These methods include finite differences, linear interpolation, Gaussian smoothing and smoothing on a sphere. The methods…
Adaptive random search approaches have been shown to be effective for global optimization problems, where under certain conditions, the expected performance time increases only linearly with dimension. However, previous analyses assume that…
Direct Preference Optimization (DPO), which derives reward signals directly from pairwise preference data, has shown its effectiveness on aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences. Despite its widespread use across…
Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) has emerged as a popular alternative to Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), offering theoretical equivalence with simpler implementation. We prove this equivalence is conditional rather…
We consider the problem of optimizing a high-dimensional convex function using stochastic zeroth-order queries. Under sparsity assumptions on the gradients or function values, we present two algorithms: a successive component/feature…
In this paper, we propose the StepDIRECT algorithm for derivative-free optimization (DFO), in which the black-box objective function has a stepwise landscape. Our framework is based on the well-known DIRECT algorithm. By incorporating the…