English
Related papers

Related papers: Query Complexity of Derivative-Free Optimization

200 papers

We study the problem of optimizing a function under a \emph{budgeted number of evaluations}. We only assume that the function is \emph{locally} smooth around one of its global optima. The difficulty of optimization is measured in terms of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-02-26 Peter L. Bartlett , Victor Gabillon , Michal Valko

In this paper, we develop convergence analysis of a modified line search method for objective functions whose value is computed with noise and whose gradient estimates are inexact and possibly random. The noise is assumed to be bounded in…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-03-05 Albert S. Berahas , Liyuan Cao , Katya Scheinberg

While traditional Deep Learning (DL) optimization methods treat all training samples equally, Distributionally Robust Optimization (DRO) adaptively assigns importance weights to different samples. However, a significant gap exists between…

This paper proposes a random subspace trust-region algorithm for general convex-constrained derivative-free optimization (DFO) problems. Similar to previous random subspace DFO methods, the convergence of our algorithm requires a certain…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-14 Yiwen Chen , Warren Hare , Amy Wiebe

A novel class of derivative-free optimization algorithms is developed. The main idea is to utilize certain non-commutative maps in order to approximate the gradient of the objective function. Convergence properties of the novel algorithms…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-05-21 Jan Feiling , Amelie Zeller , Christian Ebenbauer

The class of direct preference optimization (DPO) algorithms has emerged as a promising approach for solving the alignment problem in foundation models. These algorithms work with very limited feedback in the form of pairwise preferences…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Luca Viano , Ruida Zhou , Yifan Sun , Mahdi Namazifar , Volkan Cevher , Shoham Sabach , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh

An algorithm is proposed for solving optimization problems with stochastic objective and deterministic equality and inequality constraints. This algorithm is objective-function-free in the sense that it only uses the objective's gradient…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-01 S. Gratton , Ph. L. Toint

In this paper, we illustrate a novel method for solving optimization problems when derivatives are not explicitly available. We show that combining implicit filtering (IF), an existing derivative free optimization (DFO) method, with a deep…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-05-20 Brian Irwin , Eldad Haber , Raviv Gal , Avi Ziv

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) has emerged as a prominent algorithm for the direct and robust alignment of Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences, offering a more straightforward alternative to the complex Reinforcement…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-12-10 Junru Lu , Jiazheng Li , Siyu An , Meng Zhao , Yulan He , Di Yin , Xing Sun

Reinforcement learning is about learning agent models that make the best sequential decisions in unknown environments. In an unknown environment, the agent needs to explore the environment while exploiting the collected information, which…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-12 Hong Qian , Yang Yu

Direct Preference Optimisation (DPO) has emerged as a powerful method for aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences, offering a stable and efficient alternative to approaches that use Reinforcement learning via Human…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-05-06 Sarvesh Shashidhar , Ritik , Nachiketa Patil , Suraj Racha , Ganesh Ramakrishnan

We study the distributed stochastic optimization (DSO) problem under a heavy-tailed noise condition by utilizing a multi-agent system. Despite the extensive research on DSO algorithms used to solve DSO problems under light-tailed noise…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-23 Zhan Yu , Lan Liao , Deming Yuan , Daniel W. C. Ho , Ding-Xuan Zhou

Distributionally Favorable Optimization (DFO) is an important framework for decision-making under uncertainty, with applications across fields such as reinforcement learning, online learning, robust statistics, chance-constrained…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-01 Nan Jiang , Weijun Xie

An adaptive regularization algorithm for unconstrained nonconvex optimization is presented in which the objective function is never evaluated, but only derivatives are used. This algorithm belongs to the class of adaptive regularization…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-05-05 S. Gratton , S. Jerad , Ph. L. Toint

Stochastic compositional optimization arises in many important machine learning tasks such as value function evaluation in reinforcement learning and portfolio management. The objective function is the composition of two expectations of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-01-28 Huizhuo Yuan , Xiangru Lian , Ji Liu

This paper proposes a locally differentially private federated learning algorithm for strongly convex but possibly nonsmooth problems that protects the gradients of each worker against an honest but curious server. The proposed algorithm…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-03 Jiaojiao Zhang , Dominik Fay , Mikael Johansson

We consider the problem of minimizing a high-dimensional objective function, which may include a regularization term, using (possibly noisy) evaluations of the function. Such optimization is also called derivative-free, zeroth-order, or…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-03-20 HanQin Cai , Daniel Mckenzie , Wotao Yin , Zhenliang Zhang

A parametric class of trust-region algorithms for unconstrained nonconvex optimization is considered where the value of the objective function is never computed. The class contains a deterministic version of the first-order Adagrad method…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-06-08 S. Gratton , S. Jerad , Ph. L. Toint

Learning from preference-based feedback has recently gained traction as a promising approach to align language models with human interests. While these aligned generative models have demonstrated impressive capabilities across various…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-15 Sayak Ray Chowdhury , Anush Kini , Nagarajan Natarajan

Large pre-trained language models (PLMs) have garnered significant attention for their versatility and potential for solving a wide spectrum of natural language processing (NLP) tasks. However, the cost of running these PLMs may be…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-05-18 Chengcheng Han , Liqing Cui , Renyu Zhu , Jianing Wang , Nuo Chen , Qiushi Sun , Xiang Li , Ming Gao