Related papers: Gradient Descent Finds the Cubic-Regularized Non-C…

We consider minimization of indefinite quadratics with either trust-region (norm) constraints or cubic regularization. Despite the nonconvexity of these problems we prove that, under mild assumptions, gradient descent converges to their…

This paper proposes a stochastic variant of a classic algorithm---the cubic-regularized Newton method [Nesterov and Polyak 2006]. The proposed algorithm efficiently escapes saddle points and finds approximate local minima for general…

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…

We propose a stochastic variance-reduced cubic regularized Newton method for non-convex optimization. At the core of our algorithm is a novel semi-stochastic gradient along with a semi-stochastic Hessian, which are specifically designed for…

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) gives an optimal convergence rate when minimizing convex stochastic objectives $f(x)$. However, in terms of making the gradients small, the original SGD does not give an optimal rate, even when $f(x)$ is…

This paper proposes a stochastic gradient descent method with an adaptive Gaussian noise term for the global minimization of nearly convex functions, which are nonconvex and possess multiple strict local minimizers. The noise term,…

In this work, we analyze the global convergence property of coordinate gradient descent with random choice of coordinates and stepsizes for non-convex optimization problems. Under generic assumptions, we prove that the algorithm iterate…

A variant of consensus based distributed gradient descent (\textbf{DGD}) is studied for finite sums of smooth but possibly non-convex functions. In particular, the local gradient term in the fixed step-size iteration of each agent is…

We study the iteration complexity of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for minimizing the gradient norm of smooth, possibly nonconvex functions. We provide several results, implying that the $\mathcal{O}(\epsilon^{-4})$ upper bound of…

We consider the gradient method with variable step size for minimizing functions that are definable in o-minimal structures on the real field and differentiable with locally Lipschitz gradients. We prove that global convergence holds if…

We present a strikingly simple proof that two rules are sufficient to automate gradient descent: 1) don't increase the stepsize too fast and 2) don't overstep the local curvature. No need for functional values, no line search, no…

Finding the global minimum of non-convex functions is one of the main and most difficult problems in modern optimization. In the first part of the paper, we consider a certain class of "good" non-convex functions that can be bounded above…

In this paper, we study the iteration complexity of cubic regularization of Newton method for solving composite minimization problems with uniformly convex objective. We introduce the notion of second-order condition number of a certain…

Non-convex optimization problems are ubiquitous in machine learning, especially in Deep Learning. While such complex problems can often be successfully optimized in practice by using stochastic gradient descent (SGD), theoretical analysis…

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…

We study the classical optimization problem $\min_{x \in \mathbb{R}^d} f(x)$ and analyze the gradient descent (GD) method in both nonconvex and convex settings. It is well-known that, under the $L$-smoothness assumption ($\|\nabla^2 f(x)\|…

The incremental gradient method is a prominent algorithm for minimizing a finite sum of smooth convex functions, used in many contexts including large-scale data processing applications and distributed optimization over networks. It is a…

The paper considers the problem of network-based computation of global minima in smooth nonconvex optimization problems. It is known that distributed gradient-descent-type algorithms can achieve convergence to the set of global minima by…

Stochastic convex optimization is a basic and well studied primitive in machine learning. It is well known that convex and Lipschitz functions can be minimized efficiently using Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD). The Normalized Gradient…

Quasi-Newton methods are widely used for solving convex optimization problems due to their ease of implementation, practical efficiency, and strong local convergence guarantees. However, their global convergence is typically established…