Related papers: Dropping Convexity for Faster Semi-definite Optimi…
We study the projected gradient descent method on low-rank matrix problems with a strongly convex objective. We use the Burer-Monteiro factorization approach to implicitly enforce low-rankness; such factorization introduces non-convexity in…
Classical stochastic gradient methods are well suited for minimizing expected-value objective functions. However, they do not apply to the minimization of a nonlinear function involving expected values or a composition of two expected-value…
This paper theoretically reanalyzes the convergence of the mini-batch stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for a structured minimization problem involving a finite-sum function with its gradient being stochastically approximated, and an…
We propose an optimization method for minimizing the finite sums of smooth convex functions. Our method incorporates an accelerated gradient descent (AGD) and a stochastic variance reduction gradient (SVRG) in a mini-batch setting. Unlike…
We propose a novel stochastic gradient method---semi-stochastic coordinate descent (S2CD)---for the problem of minimizing a strongly convex function represented as the average of a large number of smooth convex functions:…
This paper optimizes the step coefficients of first-order methods for smooth convex minimization in terms of the worst-case convergence bound (i.e., efficiency) of the decrease in the gradient norm. This work is based on the performance…
Recently there are a considerable amount of work devoted to the study of the algorithmic stability and generalization for stochastic gradient descent (SGD). However, the existing stability analysis requires to impose restrictive assumptions…
We present a convergence rate analysis for biased stochastic gradient descent (SGD), where individual gradient updates are corrupted by computation errors. We develop stochastic quadratic constraints to formulate a small linear matrix…
Matrix completion has attracted much interest in the past decade in machine learning and computer vision. For low-rank promotion in matrix completion, the nuclear norm penalty is convenient due to its convexity but has a bias problem.…
We study when the \emph{optimization curve} of first-order methods -- the sequence \${f(x\_n)}*{n\ge0}\$ produced by constant-stepsize iterations -- is convex, equivalently when the forward differences \$f(x\_n)-f(x*{n+1})\$ are…
Sign Gradient Descent (SignGD) is a simple yet robust optimization method, widely used in machine learning for its resilience to gradient noise and compatibility with low-precision computations. While its empirical performance is well…
Most existing methodologies of estimating low-rank matrices rely on Burer-Monteiro factorization, but these approaches can suffer from slow convergence, especially when dealing with solutions characterized by a large condition number,…
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…
We prove that the finite-difference based derivative-free descent (FD-DFD) methods have a capability to find the global minima for a class of multiple minima problems. Our main result shows that, for a class of multiple minima objectives…
Fractional Gradient Descent (FGD) offers a novel and promising way to accelerate optimization by incorporating fractional calculus into machine learning. Although FGD has shown encouraging initial results across various optimization tasks,…
We present theoretical results on the convergence of \emph{non-convex} accelerated gradient descent in matrix factorization models with $\ell_2$-norm loss. The purpose of this work is to study the effects of acceleration in non-convex…
We study the asymmetric matrix factorization problem under a natural nonconvex formulation with arbitrary overparametrization. The model-free setting is considered, with minimal assumption on the rank or singular values of the observed…
In this work, we study the iteration complexity of gradient methods for minimizing convex quadratic functions regularized by powers of Euclidean norms. We show that, due to the uniform convexity of the objective, gradient methods have…
Nesterov's accelerated gradient descent method (AGD) is a seminal deterministic first-order method known to achieve the optimal order of iteration complexity for solving convex smooth optimization problems. Two distinct sequences of…
Fractional derivatives are a well-studied generalization of integer order derivatives. Naturally, for optimization, it is of interest to understand the convergence properties of gradient descent using fractional derivatives. Convergence…