Related papers: Distributed adaptive steplength stochastic approxi…
Two-timescale Stochastic Approximation (SA) algorithms are widely used in Reinforcement Learning (RL). Their iterates have two parts that are updated using distinct stepsizes. In this work, we develop a novel recipe for their finite sample…
Stochastic approximation (SA) algorithms are widely used in system optimization problems when only noisy measurements of the system are available. This paper studies two types of SA algorithms in a multivariate Kiefer-Wolfowitz setting:…
A framework is introduced for sequentially solving convex stochastic minimization problems, where the objective functions change slowly, in the sense that the distance between successive minimizers is bounded. The minimization problems are…
In this paper, we study federated optimization for solving stochastic variational inequalities (VIs), a problem that has attracted growing attention in recent years. Despite substantial progress, a significant gap remains between existing…
Stochastic nonconvex optimization problems with nonlinear constraints have a broad range of applications in intelligent transportation, cyber-security, and smart grids. In this paper, first, we propose an inexact-proximal accelerated…
We describe an adaptive importance sampling algorithm for rare events that is based on a dual stochastic control formulation of a path sampling problem. Specifically, we focus on path functionals that have the form of cumulate generating…
Stochastic collocation methods for approximating the solution of partial differential equations with random input data (e.g., coefficients and forcing terms) suffer from the curse of dimensionality whereby increases in the stochastic…
This paper focuses on finding approximate solutions to stochastic optimal control problems with control domains being not necessarily convex, where the state trajectory is subject to controlled stochastic differential equations. The…
In this paper, we consider multi-stage stochastic optimization problems with convex objectives and conic constraints at each stage. We present a new stochastic first-order method, namely the dynamic stochastic approximation (DSA) algorithm,…
In this paper, we present a novel stochastic method for solving variational inequalities (VI) in the context of Markovian noise. By leveraging Extragradient technique, we can productively solve VI optimization problems characterized by…
Decision-making in multi-player games can be extremely challenging, particularly under uncertainty. In this work, we propose a new sample-based approximation to a class of stochastic, general-sum, pure Nash games, where each player has an…
This paper intends to apply the sample-average-approximation (SAA) scheme to solve a system of stochastic equations (SSE), which has many applications in a variety of fields. The SAA is an effective paradigm to address risks and uncertainty…
We propose a stochastic approximation (SA) based method with randomization of samples for policy evaluation using the least squares temporal difference (LSTD) algorithm. Our proposed scheme is equivalent to running regular temporal…
In this work we introduce a novel approach, based on sampling, for finding assignments that are likely to be solutions to stochastic constraint satisfaction problems and constraint optimisation problems. Our approach reduces the size of the…
We introduce a class of Markov chains, that contains the model of stochastic approximation by averaging and non-averaging. Using martingale approximation method, we establish various deviation inequalities for separately Lipschitz functions…
Hierarchical optimization refers to problems with interdependent decision variables and objectives, such as minimax and bilevel formulations. While various algorithms have been proposed, existing methods and analyses lack adaptivity in…
Bilevel optimization problems are receiving increasing attention in machine learning as they provide a natural framework for hyperparameter optimization and meta-learning. A key step to tackle these problems is the efficient computation of…
In this paper, we investigate an optimal control problem with terminal stochastic linear complementarity constraints (SLCC), and its discrete approximation using the relaxation, the sample average approximation (SAA) and the implicit Euler…
Motivated by penalized likelihood maximization in complex models, we study optimization problems where neither the function to optimize nor its gradient have an explicit expression, but its gradient can be approximated by a Monte Carlo…
In the context of finite sums minimization, variance reduction techniques are widely used to improve the performance of state-of-the-art stochastic gradient methods. Their practical impact is clear, as well as their theoretical properties.…