Related papers: Scaling, Proximity, and Optimization of Integrally…
We derive lower bounds on the black-box oracle complexity of large-scale smooth convex minimization problems, with emphasis on minimizing smooth (with Holder continuous, with a given exponent and constant, gradient) convex functions over…
Sharpness-Aware Minimization (SAM) is an optimizer that takes a descent step based on the gradient at a perturbation $y_t = x_t + \rho \frac{\nabla f(x_t)}{\lVert \nabla f(x_t) \rVert}$ of the current point $x_t$. Existing studies prove…
A new result in convex analysis on the calculation of proximity operators in certain scaled norms is derived. We describe efficient implementations of the proximity calculation for a useful class of functions; the implementations exploit…
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}…
The study of convex functions - in particular, of their optimization (really minimization) is one of the most important fields of applied mathematics. Convexity seems to be one of those incredibly well-chosen hypotheses which is just…
Choosing the optimization algorithm that performs best on a given machine learning problem is often delicate, and there is no guarantee that current state-of-the-art algorithms will perform well across all tasks. Consequently, the more…
We consider minimizing a function consisting of a quadratic term and a proximable term which is possibly nonconvex and nonsmooth. This problem is also known as scaled proximal operator. Despite its simple form, existing methods suffer from…
Stochastic-approximation gradient methods are attractive for large-scale convex optimization because they offer inexpensive iterations. They are especially popular in data-fitting and machine-learning applications where the data arrives in…
We study differentiable strongly quasiconvex functions for providing new properties for algorithmic and monotonicity purposes. Furthemore, we provide insights into the decreasing behaviour of strongly quasiconvex functions, applying this…
Several optimization schemes have been known for convex optimization problems. However, numerical algorithms for solving nonconvex optimization problems are still underdeveloped. A progress to go beyond convexity was made by considering the…
Exactly solvable models of planar polygons, weighted by perimeter and area, have deepened our understanding of the critical behaviour of polygon models in recent years. Based on these results, we derive a conjecture for the exact form of…
In this paper, we present a new complexity result for the gradient descent method with an appropriately fixed stepsize for minimizing a strongly convex function with locally $\alpha$-H{\"o}lder continuous gradients ($0 < \alpha \leq 1$).…
Motivated by the minimax concave penalty based variable selection in high-dimensional linear regression, we introduce a simple scheme to construct structured semiconvex sparsity promoting functions from convex sparsity promoting functions…
The problem of learning threshold functions is a fundamental one in machine learning. Classical learning theory implies sample complexity of $O(\xi^{-1} \log(1/\beta))$ (for generalization error $\xi$ with confidence $1-\beta$). The private…
Random fields are commonly used for modeling of spatially (or timely) dependent stochastic processes. In this study, we provide a characterization of the intrinsic complexity of a random field in terms of its second order statistics, e.g.,…
We study when the \emph{optimization curve} of first-order methods -- the sequence \${f(x\_n)}*{n\ge0}\$ produced by constant-stepsize iterations -- is convex, equivalently when the forward differences \$f(x\_n)-f(x*{n+1})\$ are…
Perspective functions arise explicitly or implicitly in various forms in applied mathematics and in statistical data analysis. To date, no systematic strategy is available to solve the associated, typically nonsmooth, optimization problems.…
Under appropriate conditions, we obtain smoothness and convexity properties of $q$-scale functions for spectrally negative L\'evy processes. Our method appeals directly to very recent developments in the theory of potential analysis of…
Making the gradients small is a fundamental optimization problem that has eluded unifying and simple convergence arguments in first-order optimization, so far primarily reserved for other convergence criteria, such as reducing the…
We consider the class of smooth convex functions defined over an open convex set. We show that this class is essentially different than the class of smooth convex functions defined over the entire linear space by exhibiting a function that…