Related papers: Non-negative submodular stochastic probing via sto…
Submodular maximization is a classic algorithmic problem with multiple applications in data mining and machine learning; there, the growing need to deal with massive instances motivates the design of algorithms balancing the quality of the…
We present two stochastic descent algorithms that apply to unconstrained optimization and are particularly efficient when the objective function is slow to evaluate and gradients are not easily obtained, as in some PDE-constrained…
Constrained submodular maximization problems encompass a wide variety of applications, including personalized recommendation, team formation, and revenue maximization via viral marketing. The massive instances occurring in modern day…
We consider a family of algorithms that successively sample and minimize simple stochastic models of the objective function. We show that under reasonable conditions on approximation quality and regularity of the models, any such algorithm…
We study finite-sum nonconvex optimization problems, where the objective function is an average of $n$ nonconvex functions. We propose a new stochastic gradient descent algorithm based on nested variance reduction. Compared with…
In this work, we consider convex optimization problems with smooth objective function and nonsmooth functional constraints. We propose a new stochastic gradient algorithm, called Stochastic Halfspace Approximation Method (SHAM), to solve…
We consider the problem of covering multiple submodular constraints. Given a finite ground set $N$, a cost function $c: N \rightarrow \mathbb{R}_+$, $r$ monotone submodular functions $f_1,f_2,\ldots,f_r$ over $N$ and requirements…
The study of combinatorial optimization problems with a submodular objective has attracted much attention in recent years. Such problems are important in both theory and practice because their objective functions are very general. Obtaining…
In this work, we develop analysis and algorithms for a class of (stochastic) bilevel optimization problems whose lower-level (LL) problem is strongly convex and linearly constrained. Most existing approaches for solving such problems rely…
We consider the problem of maximizing the multilinear extension of a submodular function subject a single matroid constraint or multiple packing constraints with a small number of adaptive rounds of evaluation queries. We obtain the first…
Non-smooth optimization is a core ingredient of many imaging or machine learning pipelines. Non-smoothness encodes structural constraints on the solutions, such as sparsity, group sparsity, low-rank and sharp edges. It is also the basis for…
Submodular function minimization is a fundamental optimization problem that arises in several applications in machine learning and computer vision. The problem is known to be solvable in polynomial time, but general purpose algorithms have…
We study a class of nonconvex nonsmooth optimization problems in which the objective is a sum of two functions: One function is the average of a large number of differentiable functions, while the other function is proper, lower…
Maximizing submodular objectives under constraints is a fundamental problem in machine learning and optimization. We study the maximization of a nonnegative, non-monotone $\gamma$-weakly DR-submodular function over a down-closed convex…
We study a general stochastic ranking problem where an algorithm needs to adaptively select a sequence of elements so as to "cover" a random scenario (drawn from a known distribution) at minimum expected cost. The coverage of each scenario…
In this paper, we propose two novel non-stationary first-order primal-dual algorithms to solve nonsmooth composite convex optimization problems. Unlike existing primal-dual schemes where the parameters are often fixed, our methods use…
In this paper we study the fundamental problems of maximizing a continuous non-monotone submodular function over the hypercube, both with and without coordinate-wise concavity. This family of optimization problems has several applications…
Consider the problem of minimizing the expected value of a (possibly nonconvex) cost function parameterized by a random (vector) variable, when the expectation cannot be computed accurately (e.g., because the statistics of the random…
Interdiction problems ask about the worst-case impact of a limited change to an underlying optimization problem. They are a natural way to measure the robustness of a system, or to identify its weakest spots. Interdiction problems have been…
In model selection problems for machine learning, the desire for a well-performing model with meaningful structure is typically expressed through a regularized optimization problem. In many scenarios, however, the meaningful structure is…