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Related papers: A Generic Approach for Escaping Saddle points

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In modern deep learning, highly subsampled stochastic approximation (SA) methods are preferred to sample average approximation (SAA) methods because of large data sets as well as generalization properties. Additionally, due to perceived…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-08-26 Thomas O'Leary-Roseberry , Nick Alger , Omar Ghattas

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-06-15 Zhanxing Zhu , Amos J. Storkey

Second-order optimization methods exhibit fast convergence to critical points, however, in nonconvex optimization, these methods often require restrictive step-sizes to ensure a monotonically decreasing objective function. In the presence…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-10-11 Aayushya Agarwal , Larry Pileggi , Ronald Rohrer

Due to the rapid growth of data and computational resources, distributed optimization has become an active research area in recent years. While first-order methods seem to dominate the field, second-order methods are nevertheless attractive…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-06-21 Celestine Dünner , Aurelien Lucchi , Matilde Gargiani , An Bian , Thomas Hofmann , Martin Jaggi

We study acceleration and preconditioning strategies for a class of Douglas-Rachford methods aiming at the solution of convex-concave saddle-point problems associated with Fenchel-Rockafellar duality. While the basic iteration converges…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-04-22 Kristian Bredies , Hongpeng Sun

This paper presents the first optimal-rate $p$-th order methods with $p\geq 1$ for finding first and second-order stationary points of non-convex smooth objective functions over Riemannian manifolds. In contrast to the geodesically convex…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-23 David Huckleberry Gutman , George Lobo

Large scale optimization problems are ubiquitous in machine learning and data analysis and there is a plethora of algorithms for solving such problems. Many of these algorithms employ sub-sampling, as a way to either speed up the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-02-29 Farbod Roosta-Khorasani , Michael W. Mahoney

Although gradient descent (GD) almost always escapes saddle points asymptotically [Lee et al., 2016], this paper shows that even with fairly natural random initialization schemes and non-pathological functions, GD can be significantly…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-11-07 Simon S. Du , Chi Jin , Jason D. Lee , Michael I. Jordan , Barnabas Poczos , Aarti Singh

This paper focuses on the distributed optimization of stochastic saddle point problems. The first part of the paper is devoted to lower bounds for the centralized and decentralized distributed methods for smooth (strongly) convex-(strongly)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-28 Aleksandr Beznosikov , Valentin Samokhin , Alexander Gasnikov

We search saddle points for a large class of convex-concave Lagrangian. A generalized explicit iterative scheme based on Arrow-Hurwicz method converges to a saddle point of the problem. We also propose in this work, a convergent…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-12-12 Minh Phan , Cedric Galusinski

Algorithms for bilevel optimization often encounter Hessian computations, which are prohibitive in high dimensions. While recent works offer first-order methods for unconstrained bilevel problems, the constrained setting remains relatively…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-22 Guy Kornowski , Swati Padmanabhan , Kai Wang , Zhe Zhang , Suvrit Sra

We consider the convex-concave saddle point problem $\min_{\mathbf{x}}\max_{\mathbf{y}}\Phi(\mathbf{x},\mathbf{y})$, where the decision variables $\mathbf{x}$ and/or $\mathbf{y}$ subject to a multi-block structure and affine coupling…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-03-17 Junyu Zhang , Mengdi Wang , Mingyi Hong , Shuzhong Zhang

Most algorithms for solving optimization problems or finding saddle points of convex-concave functions are fixed-point algorithms. In this work we consider the generic problem of finding a fixed point of an average of operators, or an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-17 Grigory Malinovsky , Dmitry Kovalev , Elnur Gasanov , Laurent Condat , Peter Richtárik

A subgradient method is presented for solving general convex optimization problems, the main requirement being that a strictly-feasible point is known. A feasible sequence of iterates is generated, which converges to within user-specified…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-05-30 James Renegar

High-dimensional non-convex optimization problems in engineering design, control, and learning are often hindered by saddle points, flat plateaus, and strongly anisotropic curvature. This paper develops a unified, curvature-adaptive…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-04 Ronald Katende , Henry Kasumba

Geodesic convexity generalizes the notion of (vector space) convexity to nonlinear metric spaces. But unlike convex optimization, geodesically convex (g-convex) optimization is much less developed. In this paper we contribute to the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-02-22 Hongyi Zhang , Suvrit Sra

This work introduces the nested-set Hessian approximation, a second-order approximation method that can be used in any derivative-free optimization routine that requires such information. It is built on the foundation of the generalized…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-11-06 Warren Hare , Gabriel Jarry-Bolduc , Chayne Planiden

We propose an alternating subgradient method with non-constant step sizes for solving convex-concave saddle-point problems associated with general convex-concave functions. We assume that the sequence of our step sizes is not summable but…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-05-26 Hui Ouyang

In this paper, we focus on solving a class of constrained non-convex non-concave saddle point problems in a decentralized manner by a group of nodes in a network. Specifically, we assume that each node has access to a summand of a global…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-11-01 Weijie Liu , Aryan Mokhtari , Asuman Ozdaglar , Sarath Pattathil , Zebang Shen , Nenggan Zheng

It has been shown that many first-order methods satisfy the perturbed Fenchel duality inequality, which yields a unified derivation of convergence. More first-order methods are discussed in this paper, e.g., dual averaging and bundle…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-04 Tiantian Zhao