Related papers: The Proximal Robbins-Monro Method

Stochastic trajectory optimization methods like STOMP enable planning with non-differentiable costs, offering substantial flexibility over gradient-based approaches. We show that STOMP implicitly minimizes the KL divergence from a Boltzmann…

We propose an unconstrained stochastic approximation method of finding the optimal measure change (in an a priori parametric family) for Monte Carlo simulations. We consider different parametric families based on the Girsanov theorem and…

Stochastic fluctuations of molecule numbers are ubiquitous in biological systems. Important examples include gene expression and enzymatic processes in living cells. Such systems are typically modelled as chemical reaction networks whose…

The subject of stochastic approximation was founded by Robbins and Monro [Ann. Math. Statist. 22 (1951) 400--407]. After five decades of continual development, it has developed into an important area in systems control and optimization, and…

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of a broad range of variations of the stochastic proximal point method (SPPM). Proximal point methods have attracted considerable interest owing to their numerical stability and robustness…

We consider a regularized expected reward optimization problem in the non-oblivious setting that covers many existing problems in reinforcement learning (RL). In order to solve such an optimization problem, we apply and analyze the…

This paper focuses on stochastic proximal gradient methods for optimizing a smooth non-convex loss function with a non-smooth non-convex regularizer and convex constraints. To the best of our knowledge we present the first non-asymptotic…

A widely used heuristic for solving stochastic optimization problems is to use a deterministic rolling horizon procedure, which has been modified to handle uncertainty (e.g. buffer stocks, schedule slack). This approach has been criticized…

The Robbins-Siegmund theorem is one of the most important results in stochastic optimization, where it is widely used to prove the convergence of stochastic algorithms. We provide a quantitative version of the theorem, establishing a bound…

This paper considers an optimization problem for a dynamical system whose evolution depends on a collection of binary decision variables. We develop scalable approximation algorithms with provable suboptimality bounds to provide…

In this paper, we propose new proximal Newton-type methods for convex optimization problems in composite form. The applications include model predictive control (MPC) and embedded MPC. Our new methods are computationally attractive since…

Since their introduction, anchoring methods in extragradient-type saddlepoint problems have inspired a flurry of research due to their ability to provide order-optimal rates of accelerated convergence in very general problem settings. Such…

Stochastic optimisation algorithms are the de facto standard for machine learning with large amounts of data. Handling only a subset of available data in each optimisation step dramatically reduces the per-iteration computational costs,…

Historical information, such as past function values or gradients, has significant potential to enhance decentralized optimization methods for two key reasons: first, it provides richer information about the objective function, which also…

The need for fast sparse optimization is emerging, e.g., to deal with large-dimensional data-driven problems and to track time-varying systems. In the framework of linear sparse optimization, the iterative shrinkage-thresholding algorithm…

Scientists continue to develop increasingly complex mechanistic models to reflect their knowledge more realistically. Statistical inference using these models can be challenging since the corresponding likelihood function is often…

This paper considers the problem of minimizing a convex expectation function with a set of inequality convex expectation constraints. We present a computable stochastic approximation type algorithm, namely the stochastic linearized proximal…

We present a new algorithm for solving optimization problems with objective functions that are the sum of a smooth function and a (potentially) nonsmooth regularization function, and nonlinear equality constraints. The algorithm may be…

Monotone inclusions have a wide range of applications, including minimization, saddle-point, and equilibria problems. We introduce new stochastic algorithms, with or without variance reduction, to estimate a root of the expectation of…

Stochastic gradient descent with momentum (SGDM) is the dominant algorithm in many optimization scenarios, including convex optimization instances and non-convex neural network training. Yet, in the stochastic setting, momentum interferes…