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Simplex-type methods, such as the well-known Nelder-Mead algorithm, are widely used in derivative-free optimization (DFO), particularly in practice. Despite their popularity, the theoretical understanding of their convergence properties has…
This work presents the convergence rate analysis of stochastic variants of the broad class of direct-search methods of directional type. It introduces an algorithm designed to optimize differentiable objective functions $f$ whose values can…
Direct search is one of the most popular derivative-free optimization paradigms, that relies on exploring the variable space using polling directions. To analyze and implement direct search, one typically relies on positive spanning sets.…
We consider smooth stochastic convex optimization problems in the context of algorithms which are based on directional derivatives of the objective function. This context can be considered as an intermediate one between derivative-free…
Direct Multisearch is a well-established class of algorithms, suited for multiobjective derivative-free optimization. In this work, we analyze the worst-case complexity of this class of methods in its most general formulation for…
We revisit the classical problem of finding an approximately stationary point of the average of $n$ smooth and possibly nonconvex functions. The optimal complexity of stochastic first-order methods in terms of the number of gradient…
This paper is devoted to the analysis of worst case complexity bounds for linesearch-type derivative-free algorithms for the minimization of general non-convex smooth functions. We prove that two linesearch-type algorithms enjoy the same…
We consider an unconstrained problem of minimizing a smooth convex function which is only available through noisy observations of its values, the noise consisting of two parts. Similar to stochastic optimization problems, the first part is…
Two families of directional direct search methods have emerged in derivative-free and blackbox optimization (DFO and BBO), each based on distinct principles: Mesh Adaptive Direct Search (MADS) and Sufficient Decrease Direct Search (SDDS).…
We propose a new random method to minimize deterministic continuous functions over subsets $\mathcal{S}$ of high-dimensional space $\mathbb{R}^K$ without assuming convexity. Our procedure alternates between a Global Search (GS) regime to…
There has been much recent interest in finding unconstrained local minima of smooth functions, due in part of the prevalence of such problems in machine learning and robust statistics. A particular focus is algorithms with good complexity…
In this paper, we study a generic direct-search algorithm in which the polling directions are defined using random subspaces. Complexity guarantees for such an approach are derived thanks to probabilistic properties related to both the…
We consider minimizing high-dimensional smooth nonconvex objectives using only noisy pairwise comparisons. Unlike classical zeroth-order methods limited by the ambient dimension $d$, we propose Noisy-Comparison Random Search (NCRS), a…
It is well-known that given a smooth, bounded-from-below, and possibly nonconvex function, standard gradient-based methods can find $\epsilon$-stationary points (with gradient norm less than $\epsilon$) in $\mathcal{O}(1/\epsilon^2)$…
We develop new sub-optimality bounds for gradient descent (GD) that depend on the conditioning of the objective along the path of optimization rather than on global, worst-case constants. Key to our proofs is directional smoothness, a…
In this paper we present a subgradient method with non-monotone line search for the minimization of convex functions with simple convex constraints. Different from the standard subgradient method with prefixed step sizes, the new method…
We study the theoretical convergence properties of random-search methods when optimizing non-convex objective functions without having access to derivatives. We prove that standard random-search methods that do not rely on second-order…
Optimizing a function without using derivatives is a challenging paradigm, that precludes from using classical algorithms from nonlinear optimization, and may thus seem intractable other than by using heuristics. Nevertheless, the field of…
Direct search methods represent a robust and reliable class of algorithms for solving black-box optimization problems. In this paper, we explore the application of those strategies to Riemannian optimization, wherein minimization is to be…
Random search methods are widely used for global optimization due to their theoretical generality and implementation simplicity. This paper proposes a depth-first directional search (DFDS) algorithm for globally solving nonconvex…