Related papers: Bridging the Gap between Constant Step Size Stocha…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a standard optimization method to minimize a training error with respect to network parameters in modern neural network learning. However, it typically suffers from proliferation of saddle points in the…
We explore an explicit link between stochastic gradient descent using common batching strategies and splitting methods for ordinary differential equations. From this perspective, we introduce a new minibatching strategy (called Symmetric…
We study Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) with diminishing step sizes for convex objective functions. We introduce a definitional framework and theory that defines and characterizes a core property, called curvature, of convex objective…
We introduce a doubly stochastic proximal gradient algorithm for optimizing a finite average of smooth convex functions, whose gradients depend on numerically expensive expectations. Our main motivation is the acceleration of the…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is a popular tool in training large-scale machine learning models. Its performance, however, is highly variable, depending crucially on the choice of the step sizes. Accordingly, a variety of strategies for…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is almost ubiquitously used for training non-convex optimization tasks. Recently, a hypothesis proposed by Keskar et al. [2017] that large batch methods tend to converge to sharp minimizers has received…
The stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm has been widely used in statistical estimation for large-scale data due to its computational and memory efficiency. While most existing works focus on the convergence of the objective function…
In this paper, we examine the time it takes for stochastic gradient descent (SGD) to reach the global minimum of a general, non-convex loss function. We approach this question through the lens of randomly perturbed dynamical systems and…
This work characterizes the benefits of averaging schemes widely used in conjunction with stochastic gradient descent (SGD). In particular, this work provides a sharp analysis of: (1) mini-batching, a method of averaging many samples of a…
We analyze a batched variant of Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) with weighted sampling distribution for smooth and non-smooth objective functions. We show that by distributing the batches computationally, a significant speedup in the…
Compressed Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) algorithms have been recently proposed to address the communication bottleneck in distributed and decentralized optimization problems, such as those that arise in federated machine learning.…
We consider Linear Stochastic Approximation (LSA) with a constant stepsize and Markovian data. Viewing the joint process of the data and LSA iterate as a time-homogeneous Markov chain, we prove its convergence to a unique limiting and…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) optimization algorithms are key ingredients in a series of machine learning applications. In this article we perform a rigorous strong error analysis for SGD optimization algorithms. In particular, we prove…
Stopping criteria for Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) methods play important roles from enabling adaptive step size schemes to providing rigor for downstream analyses such as asymptotic inference. Unfortunately, current stopping criteria…
Stochastic gradient descent is the method of choice for large scale optimization of machine learning objective functions. Yet, its performance is greatly variable and heavily depends on the choice of the stepsizes. This has motivated a…
The non-asymptotic analysis of Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) typically yields bounds that decompose into a bias term and a variance term. In this work, we focus on the bias component and study the extent to which SGD can match the…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is one of the many iterative optimization methods that are widely used in solving machine learning problems. These methods display valuable properties and attract researchers and industrial machine learning…
We propose a new stochastic optimization framework for empirical risk minimization problems such as those that arise in machine learning. The traditional approaches, such as (mini-batch) stochastic gradient descent (SGD), utilize an…
The stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm is the algorithm we use to train neural networks. However, it remains poorly understood how the SGD navigates the highly nonlinear and degenerate loss landscape of a neural network. In this…
Stochastic Gradient (SG) is the defacto iterative technique to solve stochastic optimization (SO) problems with a smooth (non-convex) objective $f$ and a stochastic first-order oracle. SG's attractiveness is due in part to its simplicity of…