Related papers: Smooth minimization of nonsmooth functions with pa…

We present a family of algorithms, called descent algorithms, for optimizing convex and non-convex functions. We also introduce a new first-order algorithm, called rescaled gradient descent (RGD), and show that RGD achieves a faster…

We present a new method for minimizing the sum of a differentiable convex function and an $\ell_1$-norm regularizer. The main features of the new method include: $(i)$ an evolving set of indices corresponding to variables that are predicted…

We propose a trust-region type method for a class of nonsmooth nonconvex optimization problems where the objective function is a summation of a (probably nonconvex) smooth function and a (probably nonsmooth) convex function. The model…

We develop a Levenberg-Marquardt method for minimizing the sum of a smooth nonlinear least-squar es term $f(x) = \tfrac{1}{2} \|F(x)\|_2^2$ and a nonsmooth term $h$. Both $f$ and $h$ may be nonconvex. Steps are computed by minimizing the…

We consider the minimization of a sum of an expectation-valued coordinate-wise $L_i$-smooth nonconvex function and a nonsmooth block-separable convex regularizer. We propose an asynchronous variance-reduced algorithm, where in each…

Accelerated coordinate descent is widely used in optimization due to its cheap per-iteration cost and scalability to large-scale problems. Up to a primal-dual transformation, it is also the same as accelerated stochastic gradient descent…

We study the problem of estimating low-rank matrices from linear measurements (a.k.a., matrix sensing) through nonconvex optimization. We propose an efficient stochastic variance reduced gradient descent algorithm to solve a nonconvex…

We study the problem of minimizing the sum of a smooth convex function and a convex block-separable regularizer and propose a new randomized coordinate descent method, which we call ALPHA. Our method at every iteration updates a random…

This paper proposes an improved quasi-Newton penalty decomposition algorithm for the minimization of continuously differentiable functions, possibly nonconvex, over sparse symmetric sets. The method solves a sequence of penalty subproblems…

This paper proposes a novel CTA (Combine-Then-Adapt)-based decentralized algorithm for solving convex composite optimization problems over undirected and connected networks. The local loss function in these problems contains both smooth and…

We propose a new subgradient method for the minimization of nonsmooth convex functions over a convex set. To speed up computations we use adaptive approximate projections only requiring to move within a certain distance of the exact…

We propose a proximal algorithm for minimizing objective functions consisting of three summands: the composition of a nonsmooth function with a linear operator, another nonsmooth function, each of the nonsmooth summands depending on an…

We study stochastic optimization of nonconvex loss functions, which are typical objectives for training neural networks. We propose stochastic approximation algorithms which optimize a series of regularized, nonlinearized losses on large…

We consider distributed optimization with smooth convex objective functions defined on an undirected connected graph. Inspired by mirror descent mehod and RLC circuits, we propose a novel distributed mirror descent method. Compared with…

We consider the problem of minimizing a continuous function that may be nonsmooth and nonconvex, subject to bound constraints. We propose an algorithm that uses the L-BFGS quasi-Newton approximation of the problem's curvature together with…

In Part I of this paper, we proposed and analyzed a novel algorithmic framework for the minimization of a nonconvex (smooth) objective function, subject to nonconvex constraints, based on inner convex approximations. This Part II is devoted…

We consider the problem of minimizing a sum of $n$ functions over a convex parameter set $\mathcal{C} \subset \mathbb{R}^p$ where $n\gg p\gg 1$. In this regime, algorithms which utilize sub-sampling techniques are known to be effective. In…

We study finite-sum non-convex optimization $\min_{x\in\mathbb{R}^d} F(x) \;=\; \frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^n f_i(x)$ and analyze a variance-reduced cubic Newton method based on EMA-smoothed SARAH estimators for both gradient and Hessian…

In this paper, we prove that an Adam-type algorithm with smooth clipping approaches the global minimizer of the regularized non-convex loss function. Adding smooth clipping and taking the state space as the set of all trajectories, we can…

This work considers minimizing a sum of convex functions, each with potentially different structure ranging from nonsmooth to smooth, Lipschitz to non-Lipschitz. Nesterov's universal fast gradient method provides an optimal black-box…