Related papers: MOCCA: mirrored convex/concave optimization for no…
We consider minimization of stochastic functionals that are compositions of a (potentially) non-smooth convex function $h$ and smooth function $c$ and, more generally, stochastic weakly-convex functionals. We develop a family of stochastic…
Constrained non-convex optimization is fundamentally challenging, as global solutions are generally intractable and constraint qualifications may not hold. However, in many applications, including safe policy optimization in control and…
In this work, we introduce a new class of non-convex functions, called implicit concave functions, which are compositions of a concave function with a continuously differentiable mapping. We analyze the properties of their minimization by…
This paper proposes a universal algorithm for convex minimization problems of the composite form $g_0(x)+h(g_1(x),\dots, g_m(x)) + u(x)$. We allow each $g_j$ to independently range from being nonsmooth Lipschitz to smooth, from convex to…
In this article we propose a method for solving unconstrained optimization problems with convex and Lipschitz continuous objective functions. By making use of the Moreau envelopes of the functions occurring in the objective, we smooth the…
In this paper we develop a higher-order method for solving composite (non)convex minimization problems with smooth (non)convex functional constraints. At each iteration our method approximates the smooth part of the objective function and…
We study stochastic convex optimization under infinite noise variance. Specifically, when the stochastic gradient is unbiased and has uniformly bounded $(1+\kappa)$-th moment, for some $\kappa \in (0,1]$, we quantify the convergence rate of…
This work presents a unified framework that combines global approximations with locally built models to handle challenging nonconvex and nonsmooth composite optimization problems, including cases involving extended real-valued functions. We…
Composite convex optimization problems which include both a nonsmooth term and a low-rank promoting term have important applications in machine learning and signal processing, such as when one wishes to recover an unknown matrix that is…
We propose a novel adaptive, accelerated algorithm for the stochastic constrained convex optimization setting. Our method, which is inspired by the Mirror-Prox method, \emph{simultaneously} achieves the optimal rates for smooth/non-smooth…
This paper studies first order methods for solving smooth minimax optimization problems $\min_x \max_y g(x,y)$ where $g(\cdot,\cdot)$ is smooth and $g(x,\cdot)$ is concave for each $x$. In terms of $g(\cdot,y)$, we consider two settings --…
The majorization-minimization (MM) principle is an extremely general framework for deriving optimization algorithms. It includes the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm, proximal gradient algorithm, concave-convex procedure, quadratic…
This paper seeks to address how to solve non-smooth convex and strongly convex optimization problems with functional constraints. The introduced Mirror Descent (MD) method with adaptive stepsizes is shown to have a better convergence rate…
We consider stochastic optimization problems with non-convex functional constraints, such as those arising in trajectory generation, sparse approximation, and robust classification. To this end, we put forth a recursive momentum-based…
The main challenge of nonconvex optimization is to find a global optimum, or at least to avoid ``bad'' local minima and meaningless stationary points. We study here the extent to which algorithms, as opposed to optimization models and…
We consider the problem of minimization of a convex function on a simple set with convex non-smooth inequality constraint and describe first-order methods to solve such problems in different situations: smooth or non-smooth objective…
We introduce new global and local inexact oracle concepts for a wide class of convex functions in composite convex minimization. Such inexact oracles naturally come from primal-dual framework, barrier smoothing, inexact computations of…
We study a typical optimization model where the optimization variable is composed of multiple probability distributions. Though the model appears frequently in practice, such as for policy problems, it lacks specific analysis in the general…
This paper proposes and analyzes a communication-efficient distributed optimization framework for general nonconvex nonsmooth signal processing and machine learning problems under an asynchronous protocol. At each iteration, worker machines…
We extend the standard notion of self-concordance to non-convex optimization and develop a family of second-order algorithms with global convergence guarantees. In particular, two function classes -- \textit{weakly self-concordant}…