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The difficulty of minimizing a nonconvex function is in part explained by the presence of saddle points. This slows down optimization algorithms and impacts worst-case complexity guarantees. However, many nonconvex problems of interest…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-22 Florentin Goyens , Clément W. Royer

In this paper, we explore two fundamental first-order algorithms in convex optimization, namely, gradient descent (GD) and proximal gradient method (ProxGD). Our focus is on making these algorithms entirely adaptive by leveraging local…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-13 Yura Malitsky , Konstantin Mishchenko

Minimizing loss functions is central to machine-learning training. Although first-order methods dominate practical applications, higher-order techniques such as Newton's method can deliver greater accuracy and faster convergence, yet are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-25 Giuseppe Carrino , Elena Loli Piccolomini , Elisa Riccietti , Theo Mary

First-order stochastic methods are the state-of-the-art in large-scale machine learning optimization owing to efficient per-iteration complexity. Second-order methods, while able to provide faster convergence, have been much less explored…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-12-01 Naman Agarwal , Brian Bullins , Elad Hazan

Stochastic gradient-based descent (SGD), have long been central to training large language models (LLMs). However, their effectiveness is increasingly being questioned, particularly in large-scale applications where empirical evidence…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-03 Di Zhang , Yihang Zhang

Many modern learning tasks involve fitting nonlinear models to data which are trained in an overparameterized regime where the parameters of the model exceed the size of the training dataset. Due to this overparameterization, the training…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-12-27 Samet Oymak , Mahdi Soltanolkotabi

First-order methods for solving convex optimization problems have been at the forefront of mathematical optimization in the last 20 years. The rapid development of this important class of algorithms is motivated by the success stories…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-01-07 Pavel Dvurechensky , Mathias Staudigl , Shimrit Shtern

The Stochastic Gradient Descent method (SGD) and its stochastic variants have become methods of choice for solving finite-sum optimization problems arising from machine learning and data science thanks to their ability to handle large-scale…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-06 Trang H. Tran , Quoc Tran-Dinh , Lam M. Nguyen

Adaptive gradient methods, e.g. \textsc{Adam}, have achieved tremendous success in machine learning. Scaling the learning rate element-wisely by a certain form of second moment estimate of gradients, such methods are able to attain rapid…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-10 Yizhou Wang , Yue Kang , Can Qin , Huan Wang , Yi Xu , Yulun Zhang , Yun Fu

Randomly initialized first-order optimization algorithms are the method of choice for solving many high-dimensional nonconvex problems in machine learning, yet general theoretical guarantees cannot rule out convergence to critical points of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-09-28 Dar Gilboa , Sam Buchanan , John Wright

Successive quadratic approximations, or second-order proximal methods, are useful for minimizing functions that are a sum of a smooth part and a convex, possibly nonsmooth part that promotes regularization. Most analyses of iteration…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-01-25 Ching-pei Lee , Stephen J. Wright

Stochastic optimization methods have become a class of popular optimization tools in machine learning. Especially, stochastic gradient descent (SGD) has been widely used for machine learning problems such as training neural networks due to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-02-26 Qingsong Zhang , Feihu Huang , Cheng Deng , Heng Huang

Non-convex optimization is a critical tool in advancing machine learning, especially for complex models like deep neural networks and support vector machines. Despite challenges such as multiple local minima and saddle points, non-convex…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-04 Greg B Fotopoulos , Paul Popovich , Nicholas Hall Papadopoulos

Due to its simplicity and outstanding ability to generalize, stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is still the most widely used optimization method despite its slow convergence. Meanwhile, adaptive methods have attracted rising attention of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-06-15 Xunpeng Huang , Runxin Xu , Hao Zhou , Zhe Wang , Zhengyang Liu , Lei Li

Federated learning is a useful framework for centralized learning from distributed data under practical considerations of heterogeneity, asynchrony, and privacy. Federated architectures are frequently deployed in deep learning settings,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-04 Stefan Vlaski , Elsa Rizk , Ali H. Sayed

Gradient descent and its variants are widely used in machine learning. However, oracle access of gradient may not be available in many applications, limiting the direct use of gradient descent. This paper proposes a method of estimating…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-10-07 Qinbo Bai , Mridul Agarwal , Vaneet Aggarwal

While the superior performance of second-order optimization methods such as Newton's method is well known, they are hardly used in practice for deep learning because neither assembling the Hessian matrix nor calculating its inverse is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-09-16 Siyuan Shen , Tianjia Shao , Kun Zhou , Chenfanfu Jiang , Feng Luo , Yin Yang

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a prevalent optimization technique for large-scale distributed machine learning. While SGD computation can be efficiently divided between multiple machines, communication typically becomes a bottleneck…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-24 Dmitrii Avdiukhin , Grigory Yaroslavtsev

We study the asymptotic behavior of second-order algorithms mixing Newton's method and inertial gradient descent in non-convex landscapes. We show that, despite the Newtonian behavior of these methods, they almost always escape strict…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-13 Camille Castera

Second-order optimization methods, which leverage curvature information, offer faster and more stable convergence than first-order methods such as stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and Adam. However, their practical adoption is hindered by…

Emerging Technologies · Computer Science 2025-12-08 Saitao Zhang , Yubiao Luo , Shiqing Wang , Pushen Zuo , Yongxiang Li , Lunshuai Pan , Zheng Miao , Zhong Sun