Related papers: Subdeterminant Maximization via Nonconvex Relaxati…
A vast majority of machine learning algorithms train their models and perform inference by solving optimization problems. In order to capture the learning and prediction problems accurately, structural constraints such as sparsity or low…
We introduce the concept of strong high-order approximate minimizers for nonconvex optimization problems. These apply in both standard smooth and composite non-smooth settings, and additionally allow convex or inexpensive constraints. An…
Matroid interdiction problems are well-researched in the field of combinatorial optimization. In the matroid $\ell$-interdiction problem, an interdiction strategy removes a subset of cardinality $\ell$ from the matroid's ground set. The…
We investigate the performance of a deterministic GREEDY algorithm for the problem of maximizing functions under a partition matroid constraint. We consider non-monotone submodular functions and monotone subadditive functions. Even though…
Motivated by recent increased interest in optimization algorithms for non-convex optimization in application to training deep neural networks and other optimization problems in data analysis, we give an overview of recent theoretical…
Recently, convex formulations of low-rank matrix factorization problems have received considerable attention in machine learning. However, such formulations often require solving for a matrix of the size of the data matrix, making it…
We consider the problem of maximizing a non-negative submodular set function $f:2^N \rightarrow \mathbb{R}_+$ over a ground set $N$ subject to a variety of packing type constraints including (multiple) matroid constraints, knapsack…
We consider the NP-hard problem of minimizing a convex quadratic function over the integer lattice ${\bf Z}^n$. We present a simple semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation for obtaining a nontrivial lower bound on the optimal value of the…
We develop and analyze a set of new sequential simulation-optimization algorithms for large-scale multi-dimensional discrete optimization via simulation problems with a convexity structure. The "large-scale" notion refers to that the…
Many problems of theoretical and practical interest involve finding an optimum over a family of convex functions. For instance, finding the projection on the convex functions in $H^k(\Omega)$, and optimizing functionals arising from some…
Smooth convex minimization over the unit trace-norm ball is an important optimization problem in machine learning, signal processing, statistics and other fields, that underlies many tasks in which one wishes to recover a low-rank matrix…
Block-coordinate descent (BCD) is a popular framework for large-scale regularized optimization problems with block-separable structure. Existing methods have several limitations. They often assume that subproblems can be solved exactly at…
The problem of minimizing a polynomial over a set of polynomial inequalities is an NP-hard non-convex problem. Thanks to powerful results from real algebraic geometry, one can convert this problem into a nested sequence of…
We consider the optimization problem of minimizing the sum-of-nonconvex function, i.e., a convex function that is the average of nonconvex components. The existing stochastic algorithms for such a problem only focus on a single machine and…
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…
We develop an algorithmic theory of convex optimization over discrete sets. Using a combination of algebraic and geometric tools we are able to provide polynomial time algorithms for solving broad classes of convex combinatorial…
Preconditioning has long been a staple technique in optimization, often applied to reduce the condition number of a matrix and speed up the convergence of algorithms. Although there are many popular preconditioning techniques in practice,…
This paper is devoted to the theoretical and numerical investigation of an augmented Lagrangian method for the solution of optimization problems with geometric constraints. Specifically, we study situations where parts of the constraints…
Consider the problem of minimizing the expected value of a (possibly nonconvex) cost function parameterized by a random (vector) variable, when the expectation cannot be computed accurately (e.g., because the statistics of the random…
We present a novel, practical, and provable approach for solving diagonally constrained semi-definite programming (SDP) problems at scale using accelerated non-convex programming. Our algorithm non-trivially combines acceleration motions…