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We consider the problem of minimizing the sum of an average function of a large number of smooth convex components and a general, possibly non-differentiable, convex function. Although many methods have been proposed to solve this problem…
We consider the problem of minimizing the sum of two convex functions: one is the average of a large number of smooth component functions, and the other is a general convex function that admits a simple proximal mapping. We assume the whole…
In this paper, we propose a successive convex approximation framework for sparse optimization where the nonsmooth regularization function in the objective function is nonconvex and it can be written as the difference of two convex…
An algorithm is proposed, analyzed, and tested for minimizing locally Lipschitz objective functions that may be nonconvex and/or nonsmooth. The algorithm, which is built upon the gradient-sampling methodology, is designed specifically for…
Modern statistical applications often involve minimizing an objective function that may be nonsmooth and/or nonconvex. This paper focuses on a broad Bregman-surrogate algorithm framework including the local linear approximation, mirror…
Nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization problems are frequently encountered in much of statistics, business, science and engineering, but they are not yet widely recognized as a technology in the sense of scalability. A reason for this…
Stochastic gradient descent type methods are ubiquitous in machine learning, but they are only applicable to the optimization of differentiable functions. Proximal algorithms are more general and applicable to nonsmooth functions. We…
We propose a new kind of stochastic absolute value equations involving absolute values of variables. By utilizing an equivalence relation to stochastic bilinear program, we investigate the expected value formulation for the proposed…
We present a novel deep learning approach to approximate the solution of large, sparse, symmetric, positive-definite linear systems of equations. These systems arise from many problems in applied science, e.g., in numerical methods for…
In this paper we study nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization problems with semi-algebraic data, where the variables vector is split into several blocks of variables. The problem consists of one smooth function of the entire variables vector…
In this work, multi-variable derivative-free optimization algorithms for unconstrained optimization problems are developed. A novel procedure for approximating the gradient of multi-variable objective functions based on non-commutative maps…
This paper introduces a general method to approximate the convolution of an arbitrary program with a Gaussian kernel. This process has the effect of smoothing out a program. Our compiler framework models intermediate values in the program…
We consider in this paper a class of composite optimization problems whose objective function is given by the summation of a general smooth and nonsmooth component, together with a relatively simple nonsmooth term. We present a new class of…
In this paper, we analyze several methods for approximating gradients of noisy functions using only function values. These methods include finite differences, linear interpolation, Gaussian smoothing and smoothing on a sphere. The methods…
We consider the problem of minimizing the sum of a smooth function $h$ with a bounded Hessian, and a nonsmooth function. We assume that the latter function is a composition of a proper closed function $P$ and a surjective linear map $\cal…
We analyze two classical algorithms for solving additively composite convex optimization problems where the objective is the sum of a smooth term and a nonsmooth regularizer: proximal stochastic gradient method for a single regularizer; and…
In a real Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}$. Given any function $f$ convex differentiable whose solution set $\argmin_{\mathcal{H}}\,f$ is nonempty, by considering the Proximal Algorithm $x_{k+1}=\text{prox}_{\b_k f}(d x_k)$, where $0<d<1$ and…
We study the problem of minimizing a relatively-smooth convex function using stochastic Bregman gradient methods. We first prove the convergence of Bregman Stochastic Gradient Descent (BSGD) to a region that depends on the noise (magnitude…
We propose a new method for unconstrained optimization of a smooth and strongly convex function, which attains the optimal rate of convergence of Nesterov's accelerated gradient descent. The new algorithm has a simple geometric…
An adaptive regularization algorithm using inexact function and derivatives evaluations is proposed for the solution of composite nonsmooth nonconvex optimization. It is shown that this algorithm needs at most…