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In machine learning, stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is widely deployed to train models using highly non-convex objectives with equally complex noise models. Unfortunately, SGD theory often makes restrictive assumptions that fail to…
A central challenge to many fields of science and engineering involves minimizing non-convex error functions over continuous, high dimensional spaces. Gradient descent or quasi-Newton methods are almost ubiquitously used to perform such…
In order to minimize a differentiable geodesically convex function, we study a second-order dynamical system on Riemannian manifolds with an asymptotically vanishing damping term of the form $\alpha/t$. For positive values of $\alpha$,…
In this paper we analyze several new methods for solving nonconvex optimization problems with the objective function formed as a sum of two terms: one is nonconvex and smooth, and another is convex but simple and its structure is known.…
We present a new hybrid direct/iterative approach to the solution of a special class of saddle point matrices arising from the discretization of the steady incompressible Navier-Stokes equations on an Arakawa C-grid. The two-level method…
In this paper, we give a sharp analysis for Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) and prove that SGD is able to efficiently escape from saddle points and find an $(\epsilon, O(\epsilon^{0.5}))$-approximate second-order stationary point in…
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 convergence of stochastic gradient descent is highly dependent on the step-size, especially on non-convex problems such as neural network training. Step decay step-size schedules (constant and then cut) are widely used in practice…
We establish sharp well-posedness and approximation estimates for variational saddle point systems at the continuous level. The main results of this note have been known to be true only in the finite dimensional case. Known spectral results…
Finding constrained saddle points on Riemannian manifolds is significant for analyzing energy landscapes arising in physics and chemistry. Existing works have been limited to special manifolds that admit global regular level-set…
In this paper, we investigate a general class of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithms, called Conditioned SGD, based on a preconditioning of the gradient direction. Using a discrete-time approach with martingale tools, we establish…
We develop two compression based stochastic gradient algorithms to solve a class of non-smooth strongly convex-strongly concave saddle-point problems in a decentralized setting (without a central server). Our first algorithm is a…
This paper aims at developing novel shuffling gradient-based methods for tackling two classes of minimax problems: nonconvex-linear and nonconvex-strongly concave settings. The first algorithm addresses the nonconvex-linear minimax model…
Nonconvex-concave min-max problem arises in many machine learning applications including minimizing a pointwise maximum of a set of nonconvex functions and robust adversarial training of neural networks. A popular approach to solve this…
Nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization problems are frequently encountered in much of statistics, business, science and engineering, but they are not yet widely recognized as a technology in the sense of scalability. A reason for this…
Policy gradients methods apply to complex, poorly understood, control problems by performing stochastic gradient descent over a parameterized class of polices. Unfortunately, even for simple control problems solvable by standard dynamic…
We present two stochastic descent algorithms that apply to unconstrained optimization and are particularly efficient when the objective function is slow to evaluate and gradients are not easily obtained, as in some PDE-constrained…
A central challenge to using first-order methods for optimizing nonconvex problems is the presence of saddle points. First-order methods often get stuck at saddle points, greatly deteriorating their performance. Typically, to escape from…
We consider a generic convex-concave saddle point problem with separable structure, a form that covers a wide-ranged machine learning applications. Under this problem structure, we follow the framework of primal-dual updates for saddle…
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…