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The (1+1)-evolution strategy (ES) with success-based step-size adaptation is analyzed on a general convex quadratic function and its monotone transformation, that is, $f(x) = g((x - x^*)^\mathrm{T} H (x - x^*))$, where…
Evolution Strategies (ES) are stochastic derivative-free optimization algorithms whose most prominent representative, the CMA-ES algorithm, is widely used to solve difficult numerical optimization problems. We provide the first rigorous…
In this paper, we consider comparison-based adaptive stochastic algorithms for solving numerical optimisation problems. We consider a specific subclass of algorithms that we call comparison-based step-size adaptive randomized search…
Evolution strategies (ESs) are zeroth-order stochastic black-box optimization heuristics invariant to monotonic transformations of the objective function. They evolve a multivariate normal distribution, from which candidate solutions are…
Gradient-based methods are well-suited for derivative-free optimization (DFO), where finite-difference (FD) estimates are commonly used as gradient surrogates. Traditional stochastic approximation methods, such as Kiefer-Wolfowitz (KW) and…
Evolution strategy (ES) is one of the promising classes of algorithms for black-box continuous optimization. Despite its broad successes in applications, theoretical analysis on the speed of its convergence is limited on convex quadratic…
The paper discusses derivative-free optimization (DFO), which involves minimizing a function without access to gradients or directional derivatives, only function evaluations. Classical DFO methods, which mimic gradient-based methods, such…
The class of algorithms called Hessian Estimation Evolution Strategies (HE-ESs) update the covariance matrix of their sampling distribution by directly estimating the curvature of the objective function. The approach is practically…
We establish global convergence of the (1+1) evolution strategy, i.e., convergence to a critical point independent of the initial state. More precisely, we show the existence of a critical limit point, using a suitable extension of the…
This paper analyses a $(1,\lambda)$-Evolution Strategy, a randomised comparison-based adaptive search algorithm, on a simple constraint optimisation problem. The algorithm uses resampling to handle the constraint and optimizes a linear…
Derivative-free optimization (DFO) consists in finding the best value of an objective function without relying on derivatives. To tackle such problems, one may build approximate derivatives, using for instance finite-difference estimates.…
Derivative-free optimization (DFO) is the mathematical study of the optimization algorithms that do not use derivatives. One branch of DFO focuses on model-based DFO methods, where an approximation of the objective function is used to guide…
Mixed-integer extensions of evolution strategies (ES) that discretize selected coordinates of sampled continuous vectors often impose a lower bound on the standard deviation of integer variables to prevent premature convergence. While these…
Two of the most fundamental prototypes of greedy optimization are the matching pursuit and Frank-Wolfe algorithms. In this paper, we take a unified view on both classes of methods, leading to the first explicit convergence rates of matching…
The classical line search for learning rate (LR) tuning in the stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm can tame the convergence slowdown due to data-sampling noise. In a federated setting, wherein the client heterogeneity introduces a…
We propose approximately exact line search (AELS), which uses only function evaluations to select a step size within a constant fraction of the exact line search minimizer of a unimodal objective. We bound the number of iterations and…
We propose a derivative-free saddle-search algorithm designed to locate transition states using only function evaluations. The algorithm employs a nested architecture consisting of an inner eigenvector search and an outer saddle-point…
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…
Gaussian smoothing (GS) is a derivative-free optimization (DFO) algorithm that estimates the gradient of an objective using perturbations of the current parameters sampled from a standard normal distribution. We generalize it to sampling…
While evolutionary algorithms are known to be very successful for a broad range of applications, the algorithm designer is often left with many algorithmic choices, for example, the size of the population, the mutation rates, and the…