Related papers: Provable Submodular Minimization using Wolfe's Alg…
Frank--Wolfe methods avoid projections, but over curved feasible regions the full-space linear minimization oracle (LMO) can itself become the computational bottleneck. We introduce random-subspace Frank--Wolfe (RSFW), the first…
With the extensive application of submodularity, its generalizations are constantly being proposed. However, most of them are tailored for special problems. In this paper, we focus on quasi-submodularity, a universal generalization, which…
Learning a deep neural network requires solving a challenging optimization problem: it is a high-dimensional, non-convex and non-smooth minimization problem with a large number of terms. The current practice in neural network optimization…
We demonstrate how to scalably solve a class of constrained self-concordant minimization problems using linear minimization oracles (LMO) over the constraint set. We prove that the number of LMO calls of our method is nearly the same as…
We give sublinear-time approximation algorithms for some optimization problems arising in machine learning, such as training linear classifiers and finding minimum enclosing balls. Our algorithms can be extended to some kernelized versions…
We consider the classical setting of optimizing a nonsmooth Lipschitz continuous convex function over a convex constraint set, when having access to a (stochastic) first-order oracle (FO) for the function and a projection oracle (PO) for…
We study the problem of maximizing a monotone submodular set function subject to linear packing constraints. An instance of this problem consists of a matrix $A \in [0,1]^{m \times n}$, a vector $b \in [1,\infty)^m$, and a monotone…
In this paper, the Minimum Cost Submodular Cover problem is studied, which is to minimize a modular cost function such that the monotone submodular benefit function is above a threshold. For this problem, an evolutionary algorithm EASC is…
Theoretical studies on evolutionary algorithms have developed vigorously in recent years. Many such algorithms have theoretical guarantees in both running time and approximation ratio. Some approximation mechanism seems to be inherently…
We study a phase retrieval problem in the Poisson noise model. Motivated by the PhaseLift approach, we approximate the maximum-likelihood estimator by solving a convex program with a nuclear norm constraint. While the Frank-Wolfe algorithm,…
In this paper we provide an introduction to the Frank-Wolfe algorithm, a method for smooth convex optimization in the presence of (relatively) complicated constraints. We will present the algorithm, introduce key concepts, and establish…
Submodular maximization is a general optimization problem with a wide range of applications in machine learning (e.g., active learning, clustering, and feature selection). In large-scale optimization, the parallel running time of an…
We introduce a new class of functions that can be minimized in polynomial time in the value oracle model. These are functions $f$ satisfying $f(x)+f(y)\ge f(x \sqcap y)+f(x \sqcup y)$ where the domain of each variable $x_i$ corresponds to…
The Frank-Wolfe algorithm has become a popular first-order optimization algorithm for it is simple and projection-free, and it has been successfully applied to a variety of real-world problems. Its main drawback however lies in its…
We develop a novel variant of the classical Frank-Wolfe algorithm, which we call spectral Frank-Wolfe, for convex optimization over a spectrahedron. The spectral Frank-Wolfe algorithm has a novel ingredient: it computes a few eigenvectors…
The submodular Santa Claus problem was introduced in a seminal work by Goemans, Harvey, Iwata, and Mirrokni (SODA'09) as an application of their structural result. In the mentioned problem $n$ unsplittable resources have to be assigned to…
The problem of maximizing nonnegative monotone submodular functions under a certain constraint has been intensively studied in the last decade, and a wide range of efficient approximation algorithms have been developed for this problem.…
Gradient-based Bi-Level Optimization (BLO) methods have been widely applied to handle modern learning tasks. However, most existing strategies are theoretically designed based on restrictive assumptions (e.g., convexity of the lower-level…
This paper presents a polynomial-time $1/2$-approximation algorithm for maximizing nonnegative $k$-submodular functions. This improves upon the previous $\max\{1/3, 1/(1+a)\}$-approximation by Ward and \v{Z}ivn\'y~(SODA'14), where…
Submodular function minimization is a key problem in a wide variety of applications in machine learning, economics, game theory, computer vision, and many others. The general solver has a complexity of $O(n^3 \log^2 n . E +n^4 {\log}^{O(1)}…