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Related papers: Gradient Descent Converges to Minimizers

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Most existing analyses of (stochastic) gradient descent rely on the condition that for $L$-smooth costs, the step size is less than $2/L$. However, many works have observed that in machine learning applications step sizes often do not…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-06-10 Kwangjun Ahn , Jingzhao Zhang , Suvrit Sra

Motivated by applications in Optimization, Game Theory, and the training of Generative Adversarial Networks, the convergence properties of first order methods in min-max problems have received extensive study. It has been recognized that…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-29 Constantinos Daskalakis , Ioannis Panageas

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is the main approach to optimizing neural networks. Several generalization properties of deep networks, such as convergence to a flatter minima, are believed to arise from SGD. This article explores the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-05 Aditya Shah , Aditya Challa , Sravan Danda , Archana Mathur , Snehanshu Saha

Distributed optimization has received a lot of interest in recent years due to its wide applications in various fields. In this work, we revisit the convergence property of the decentralized gradient descent [A. Nedi{\'c}-A.Ozdaglar (2009)]…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-03-31 Woocheol Choi , Jimyeong Kim

We consider the problem of learning a one-hidden-layer neural network with non-overlapping convolutional layer and ReLU activation, i.e., $f(\mathbf{Z}, \mathbf{w}, \mathbf{a}) = \sum_j a_j\sigma(\mathbf{w}^T\mathbf{Z}_j)$, in which both…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-06-18 Simon S. Du , Jason D. Lee , Yuandong Tian , Barnabas Poczos , Aarti Singh

Existing analyses of optimization in deep learning are either continuous, focusing on (variants of) gradient flow, or discrete, directly treating (variants of) gradient descent. Gradient flow is amenable to theoretical analysis, but is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-30 Omer Elkabetz , Nadav Cohen

We study a fixed step-size noisy distributed gradient descent algorithm for solving optimization problems in which the objective is a finite sum of smooth but possibly non-convex functions. Random perturbations are introduced to the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-07-21 Lei Qin , Michael Cantoni , Ye Pu

We study the problem of finding the global Riemannian center of mass of a set of data points on a Riemannian manifold. Specifically, we investigate the convergence of constant step-size gradient descent algorithms for solving this problem.…

Differential Geometry · Mathematics 2012-01-05 Bijan Afsari , Roberto Tron , René Vidal

It was previously shown by Davis and Drusvyatskiy that every Clarke critical point of a generic, semialgebraic (and more generally definable in an o-minimal structure), weakly convex function is lying on an active manifold and is either a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-02-14 Sholom Schechtman

We examine gradient descent on unregularized logistic regression problems, with homogeneous linear predictors on linearly separable datasets. We show the predictor converges to the direction of the max-margin (hard margin SVM) solution. The…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-10-29 Daniel Soudry , Elad Hoffer , Mor Shpigel Nacson , Suriya Gunasekar , Nathan Srebro

We propose a new gradient descent algorithm with added stochastic terms for finding the global optimizers of nonconvex optimization problems. A key component in the algorithm is the adaptive tuning of the randomness based on the value of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-06-16 Björn Engquist , Kui Ren , Yunan Yang

A vast literature on convergence guarantees for gradient descent and derived methods exists at the moment. However, a simple practical situation remains unexplored: when a fixed step size is used, can we expect gradient descent to converge…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-10 Alexandru Crăciun , Debarghya Ghoshdastidar

This work establishes new convergence guarantees for gradient descent in smooth convex optimization via a computer-assisted analysis technique. Our theory allows nonconstant stepsize policies with frequent long steps potentially violating…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-06 Benjamin Grimmer

The aim of decentralized gradient descent (DGD) is to minimize a sum of $n$ functions held by interconnected agents. We study the stability of DGD in open contexts where agents can join or leave the system, resulting each time in the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-09-14 Julien M. Hendrickx , Michael G. Rabbat

Efficient computation of min-max problems is a central question in optimization, learning, games, and controls. Arguably the most natural algorithm is gradient-descent-ascent (GDA). However, since the 1970s, conventional wisdom has argued…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-05 Henry Shugart , Jason M. Altschuler

We give here a proof of the convergence of the Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) in a self-contained manner.

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-11-15 Gabrel Turinici

Gradient descent is a simple and widely used optimization method for machine learning. For homogeneous linear classifiers applied to separable data, gradient descent has been shown to converge to the maximal margin (or equivalently, the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-07-30 Denali Molitor , Deanna Needell , Rachel Ward

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with mini-batching is a standard tool in large-scale optimization, yet its theoretical properties under heavy-tailed gradient noise remain largely unexplored. In this paper we study SGD with increasing…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-05-11 Bartosz Glowacki , Rafal Kulik , Philippe Soulier

We study the asymptotic shape of the trajectory of the stochastic gradient descent algorithm applied to a convex objective function. Under mild regularity assumptions, we prove a functional central limit theorem for the properly rescaled…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-18 Kessang Flamand , Victor-Emmanuel Brunel

A dynamical system is defined in terms of the gradient of a payoff function. Dynamical variables are of two types, ascent and descent. The ascent variables move in the direction of the gradient, while the descent variables move in the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-03-07 H. Sebastian Seung