Related papers: Global Convergence of Langevin Dynamics Based Algo…

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…

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) gives an optimal convergence rate when minimizing convex stochastic objectives $f(x)$. However, in terms of making the gradients small, the original SGD does not give an optimal rate, even when $f(x)$ is…

Applying standard Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms to large data sets is computationally expensive. Both the calculation of the acceptance probability and the creation of informed proposals usually require an iteration through the…

It is well known that adding any skew symmetric matrix to the gradient of Langevin dynamics algorithm results in a non-reversible diffusion with improved convergence rate. This paper presents a gradient algorithm to adaptively optimize the…

We study learning to learn for regression problems through the lens of hyperparameter tuning. We propose the Langevin Gradient Descent Algorithm (LGD), which approximates the mean of the posterior distribution defined by the loss function…

In this paper, we study decentralized online stochastic non-convex optimization over a network of nodes. Integrating a technique called gradient tracking in decentralized stochastic gradient descent, we show that the resulting algorithm,…

In this paper, we provide new insights on the Unadjusted Langevin Algorithm. We show that this method can be formulated as a first order optimization algorithm of an objective functional defined on the Wasserstein space of order $2$. Using…

This paper describes a novel algorithmic framework to minimize a finite-sum of functions available over a network of nodes. The proposed framework, that we call~\GTVR, is stochastic and decentralized, and thus is particularly suitable for…

We consider the problem of finding nearly optimal solutions of optimization problems with random objective functions. Two concrete problems we consider are (a) optimizing the Hamiltonian of a spherical or Ising $p$-spin glass model, and (b)…

Stochastic optimization algorithms with variance reduction have proven successful for minimizing large finite sums of functions. Unfortunately, these techniques are unable to deal with stochastic perturbations of input data, induced for…

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…

Training neural networks requires optimizing a loss function that may be highly irregular, and in particular neither convex nor smooth. Popular training algorithms are based on stochastic gradient descent with momentum (SGDM), for which…

We analyze stochastic gradient algorithms for optimizing nonconvex, nonsmooth finite-sum problems. In particular, the objective function is given by the summation of a differentiable (possibly nonconvex) component, together with a possibly…

Large-language models are notoriously famous for their impressive performance across a wide range of tasks. One surprising example of such impressive performance is a recently identified capacity of LLMs to understand the governing…

Stochastic gradient MCMC methods, such as stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics (SGLD), employ fast but noisy gradient estimates to enable large-scale posterior sampling. Although we can easily extend SGLD to distributed settings, it…

Communication has been seen as a significant bottleneck in industrial applications over large-scale networks. To alleviate the communication burden, sign-based optimization algorithms have gained popularity recently in both industrial and…

We consider stochastic approximations of sampling algorithms, such as Stochastic Gradient Langevin Dynamics (SGLD) and the Random Batch Method (RBM) for Interacting Particle Dynamcs (IPD). We observe that the noise introduced by the…

We propose and analyze several stochastic gradient algorithms for finding stationary points or local minimum in nonconvex, possibly with nonsmooth regularizer, finite-sum and online optimization problems. First, we propose a simple proximal…

We consider nonconvex optimization problem over simplex, and more generally, a product of simplices. We provide an algorithm, Langevin Multiplicative Weights Update (LMWU) for solving global optimization problems by adding a noise scaling…

Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) is an important alternative to the Langevin-type algorithms for sampling from probability distributions of the form $\pi(x) \propto \exp(-V(x))$. In the existing theory of Langevin-type algorithms…