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The stochastic block model (SBM) is a popular tool for community detection in networks, but fitting it by maximum likelihood (MLE) involves a computationally infeasible optimization problem. We propose a new semidefinite programming (SDP)…
Many modern machine learning applications - from online principal component analysis to covariance matrix identification and dictionary learning - can be formulated as minimization problems on Riemannian manifolds, and are typically solved…
In this paper we study the relationship between the optimal value of a homogeneous quadratic optimization problem and that of its Semidefinite Programming (SDP) relaxation. We consider two quadratic optimization models: (1) $\min \{x^* C x…
Many problems of systems control theory boil down to solving polynomial equations, polynomial inequalities or polyomial differential equations. Recent advances in convex optimization and real algebraic geometry can be combined to generate…
The service rate region (SRR) has emerged as a critical performance metric for distributed systems that store data redundantly. It measures the system's ability to serve multiple users concurrently. Mathematically, the SRR is a polytope in…
Mirror descent (MD) is a powerful first-order optimization technique that subsumes several optimization algorithms including gradient descent (GD). In this work, we develop a semi-definite programming (SDP) framework to analyze the…
Convergence to a saddle point for convex-concave functions has been studied for decades, while recent years has seen a surge of interest in non-convex (zero-sum) smooth games, motivated by their recent wide applications. It remains an…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a widely adopted iterative method for optimizing differentiable objective functions. In this paper, we propose and discuss a novel approach to scale up SGD in applications involving non-convex functions…
Recently, Loizou et al. (2021), proposed and analyzed stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with stochastic Polyak stepsize (SPS). The proposed SPS comes with strong convergence guarantees and competitive performance; however, it has two main…
In this paper, we propose two algorithms for nonlinear semi-infinite semi-definite programs with infinitely many convex inequality constraints, called SISDP for short. A straightforward approach to the SISDP is to use classical methods for…
Saddle point problems, ubiquitous in optimization, extend beyond game theory to diverse domains like power networks and reinforcement learning. This paper presents novel approaches to tackle saddle point problem, with a focus on…
Momentum Stochastic Gradient Descent (MSGD) algorithm has been widely applied to many nonconvex optimization problems in machine learning, e.g., training deep neural networks, variational Bayesian inference, and etc. Despite its empirical…
This paper studies an optimization problem on the sum of traces of matrix quadratic forms in $m$ semi-orthogonal matrices, which can be considered as a generalization of the synchronization of rotations. While the problem is nonconvex, the…
An important problem in the breeding of livestock, crops, and forest trees is the optimum of selection of genotypes that maximizes genetic gain. The key constraint in the optimal selection is a convex quadratic constraint that ensures…
We consider the problem of embedding a finite set of points $\{x_1, \ldots, x_n\} \in \mathbb{R}^d$ that satisfy $\ell_2^2$ triangle inequalities into $\ell_1$, when the points are approximately low-dimensional. Goemans (unpublished,…
Under interpolation-type assumptions such as the strong growth condition, stochastic optimization methods can attain convergence rates comparable to full-batch methods, but their performance, particularly for SGD, remains highly sensitive…
Large-scale nonconvex optimization problems are ubiquitous in modern machine learning, and among practitioners interested in solving them, Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) reigns supreme. We revisit the analysis of SGD in the nonconvex…
Recent advances in symbolic dynamic programming (SDP) combined with the extended algebraic decision diagram (XADD) data structure have provided exact solutions for mixed discrete and continuous (hybrid) MDPs with piecewise linear dynamics…
A stochastic-gradient-based interior-point algorithm for minimizing a continuously differentiable objective function (that may be nonconvex) subject to bound constraints is presented, analyzed, and demonstrated through experimental results.…
We develop a trust-region method for efficiently minimizing the sum of a smooth function, a nonsmooth convex function, and the composition of a finite-valued support function with a smooth function. Optimization problems with this structure…