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In recent years, nonconvex minimax problems have attracted significant attention due to their broad applications in machine learning, including generative adversarial networks, robust optimization and adversarial training. Most existing…
We present a stochastic descent algorithm for unconstrained optimization that is particularly efficient when the objective function is slow to evaluate and gradients are not easily obtained, as in some PDE-constrained optimization and…
In this work, we present a globalized stochastic semismooth Newton method for solving stochastic optimization problems involving smooth nonconvex and nonsmooth convex terms in the objective function. We assume that only noisy gradient and…
We propose a new algorithm to solve optimization problems of the form $\min f(X)$ for a smooth function $f$ under the constraints that $X$ is positive semidefinite and the diagonal blocks of $X$ are small identity matrices. Such problems…
Motivated by the problem of tuning hyperparameters in machine learning, we present a new approach for gradually and adaptively optimizing an unknown function using estimated gradients. We validate the empirical performance of the proposed…
We propose an algorithmic framework, that employs active subspace techniques, for scalable global optimization of functions with low effective dimension (also referred to as low-rank functions). This proposal replaces the original…
Bayesian optimization and Lipschitz optimization have developed alternative techniques for optimizing black-box functions. They each exploit a different form of prior about the function. In this work, we explore strategies to combine these…
We consider stochastic gradient estimation using only black-box function evaluations, where the function argument lies within a probability simplex. This problem is motivated from gradient-descent optimization procedures in multiple…
We study the problem of zero-order optimization of a strongly convex function. The goal is to find the minimizer of the function by a sequential exploration of its values, under measurement noise. We study the impact of higher order…
In this paper we consider a distributed stochastic optimization problem without the gradient/subgradient information for the local objective functions, subject to local convex constraints. The objective functions may be non-smooth and…
We formalize a new paradigm for optimality of algorithms, that generalizes worst-case optimality based only on input-size to problem-dependent parameters including implicit ones. We re-visit some existing sorting algorithms from this…
Parallel black box optimization consists in estimating the optimum of a function using $\lambda$ parallel evaluations of $f$. Averaging the $\mu$ best individuals among the $\lambda$ evaluations is known to provide better estimates of the…
In this paper, we propose a distributed first-order algorithm with backtracking linesearch for solving multi-agent minimisation problems, where each agent handles a local objective involving nonsmooth and smooth components. Unlike existing…
In this paper some adaptive mirror descent algorithms for problems of minimization convex objective functional with several convex Lipschitz (generally, non-smooth) functional constraints are considered. It is shown that the methods are…
This paper studies non-smooth problems of convex stochastic optimization. Using the smoothing technique based on the replacement of the function value at the considered point by the averaged function value over a ball (in $l_1$-norm or…
We consider the problem of minimizing a convex objective which is the sum of a smooth part, with Lipschitz continuous gradient, and a nonsmooth part. Inspired by various applications, we focus on the case when the nonsmooth part is a…
This work considers stochastic optimization problems in which the objective function values can only be computed by a blackbox corrupted by some random noise following an unknown distribution. The proposed method is based on sequential…
This paper considers the distributed smooth optimization problem in which the objective is to minimize a global cost function formed by a sum of local smooth cost functions, by using local information exchange. The standard assumption for…
In this work, we propose a novel adaptive stochastic gradient-free (ASGF) approach for solving high-dimensional nonconvex optimization problems based on function evaluations. We employ a directional Gaussian smoothing of the target function…
A branch and bound algorithm is developed for global optimization. Branching in the algorithm is accomplished by subdividing the feasible set using ellipses. Lower bounds are obtained by replacing the concave part of the objective function…