Related papers: EE-Grad: Exploration and Exploitation for Cost-Eff…
Zeroth-order optimization (ZOO) is an important framework for stochastic optimization when gradients are unavailable or expensive to compute. A potential limitation of existing ZOO methods is the bias inherent in most gradient estimators…
We propose mS2GD: a method incorporating a mini-batching scheme for improving the theoretical complexity and practical performance of semi-stochastic gradient descent (S2GD). We consider the problem of minimizing a strongly convex function…
We study a new aggregation operator for gradients coming from a mini-batch for stochastic gradient (SG) methods that allows a significant speed-up in the case of sparse optimization problems. We call this method AdaBatch and it only…
This paper presents a methodology for selecting the mini-batch size that minimizes Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) learning time for single and multiple learner problems. By decoupling algorithmic analysis issues from hardware and…
We present a uniform analysis of biased stochastic gradient methods for minimizing convex, strongly convex, and non-convex composite objectives, and identify settings where bias is useful in stochastic gradient estimation. The framework we…
This paper presents an algorithmic framework for solving unconstrained stochastic optimization problems using only stochastic function evaluations. We employ central finite-difference based gradient estimation methods to approximate the…
Algorithms for bandit convex optimization and online learning often rely on constructing noisy gradient estimates, which are then used in appropriately adjusted first-order algorithms, replacing actual gradients. Depending on the properties…
This paper considers a distributed stochastic strongly convex optimization, where agents connected over a network aim to cooperatively minimize the average of all agents' local cost functions. Due to the stochasticity of gradient estimation…
We introduce Multi-Iteration Stochastic Optimizers, a novel class of first-order stochastic methods that control the relative $L^2$ error using successive control variates along the iteration path. By exploiting correlations between…
This paper studies the problem of distributed stochastic optimization in an adversarial setting where, out of the $m$ machines which allegedly compute stochastic gradients every iteration, an $\alpha$-fraction are Byzantine, and can behave…
Classical stochastic gradient methods are well suited for minimizing expected-value objective functions. However, they do not apply to the minimization of a nonlinear function involving expected values or a composition of two expected-value…
A popular approach to minimize a finite-sum of convex functions is stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and its variants. Fundamental research questions associated with SGD include: (i) To find a lower bound on the number of times that the…
Conditional stochastic optimization covers a variety of applications ranging from invariant learning and causal inference to meta-learning. However, constructing unbiased gradient estimators for such problems is challenging due to the…
We propose AEGD, a new algorithm for first-order gradient-based optimization of non-convex objective functions, based on a dynamically updated energy variable. The method is shown to be unconditionally energy stable, irrespective of the…
We propose a general yet simple theorem describing the convergence of SGD under the arbitrary sampling paradigm. Our theorem describes the convergence of an infinite array of variants of SGD, each of which is associated with a specific…
Stochastic gradient descent plays a fundamental role in nearly all applications of deep learning. However its ability to converge to a global minimum remains shrouded in mystery. In this paper we propose to study the behavior of the loss…
Stochastic optimization in learning and inference often relies on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) to approximate gradients when exact computation is intractable. However, finite-time MCMC estimators are biased, and reducing this bias…
The stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm has been widely used to optimize deep Cox neural network (Cox-NN) by updating model parameters using mini-batches of data. We show that SGD aims to optimize the average of mini-batch…
Increasing the mini-batch size for stochastic gradient descent offers significant opportunities to reduce wall-clock training time, but there are a variety of theoretical and systems challenges that impede the widespread success of this…
We firstly propose the new stochastic gradient estimate of unbiasedness and minimized variance in this paper. Secondly, we propose the two algorithms: Algorithml and Algorithm2 which apply the new stochastic gradient estimate to modern…