Related papers: Cumulative Step-size Adaptation on Linear Function…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is a popular tool in training large-scale machine learning models. Its performance, however, is highly variable, depending crucially on the choice of the step sizes. Accordingly, a variety of strategies for…
In this work we show that Evolution Strategies (ES) are a viable method for learning non-differentiable parameters of large supervised models. ES are black-box optimization algorithms that estimate distributions of model parameters; however…
In this paper, a self-adaptive contractive (SAC) algorithm is proposed for enhanced dynamic phasor estimation in the diverse operating conditions of modern power systems. At a high-level, the method is composed of three stages: parameter…
Evolutionary optimization algorithms often face defects and limitations that complicate the evolution processes or even prevent them from reaching the global optimum. A notable constraint pertains to the considerable quantity of function…
We study decentralized optimization where multiple agents minimize the average of their (strongly) convex, smooth losses over a communication graph. Convergence of the existing decentralized methods generally hinges on an apriori, proper…
We describe the decomposition of QSO absorption line ensembles applying an evolutionary forward modelling technique. The modelling is optimized using an evolution strategy (ES) based on a novel concept of completely derandomized…
For many machine learning problems, data is abundant and it may be prohibitive to make multiple passes through the full training set. In this context, we investigate strategies for dynamically increasing the effective sample size, when…
Compressed Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) algorithms have been recently proposed to address the communication bottleneck in distributed and decentralized optimization problems, such as those that arise in federated machine learning.…
Differential evolution (DE) has competitive performance on constrained optimization problems (COPs), which targets at searching for global optimal solution without violating the constraints. Generally, researchers pay more attention on…
Reliable probabilities are critical in high-risk applications, yet common calibration criteria (confidence, class-wise) are only necessary for full distributional calibration, and post-hoc methods often lack distribution-free guarantees. We…
We study the feature-scaled version of the Monte Carlo algorithm with linear function approximation. This algorithm converges to a scale-invariant solution, which is not unduly affected by states having feature vectors with large norms. The…
Subgradient methods are the natural extension to the non-smooth case of the classical gradient descent for regular convex optimization problems. However, in general, they are characterized by slow convergence rates, and they require…
Proportional integral derivative (PID) controllers are important and widely used tools in system control. Tuning of the controller gains is a laborious task, especially for complex systems such as combustion engines. To minimize the time of…
In this work, we present and analyze C-SAGA, a (deterministic) cyclic variant of SAGA. C-SAGA is an incremental gradient method that minimizes a sum of differentiable convex functions by cyclically accessing their gradients. Even though the…
Two meta-evolutionary optimization strategies described in this paper accelerate the convergence of evolutionary programming algorithms while still retaining much of their ability to deal with multi-modal problems. The strategies, called…
There has been considerable interest in making Bayesian inference more scalable. In big data settings, most literature focuses on reducing the computing time per iteration, with less focused on reducing the number of iterations needed in…
Slice Sampling has emerged as a powerful Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm that adapts to the characteristics of the target distribution with minimal hand-tuning. However, Slice Sampling's performance is highly sensitive to the…
The mutation process in evolution strategies has been interlinked with the normal distribution since its inception. Many lines of reasoning have been given for this strong dependency, ranging from maximum entropy arguments to the need for…
Motivated by the widespread use of temporal-difference (TD-) and Q-learning algorithms in reinforcement learning, this paper studies a class of biased stochastic approximation (SA) procedures under a mild "ergodic-like" assumption on the…
We consider a setting in which $N$ agents aim to speedup a common Stochastic Approximation (SA) problem by acting in parallel and communicating with a central server. We assume that the up-link transmissions to the server are subject to…