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Classical stochastic gradient methods are well suited for minimizing expected-value objective functions. However, they do not apply to the minimization of a nonlinear function involving expected values or a composition of two expected-value…
In this paper, we introduce a new stochastic approximation (SA) type algorithm, namely the randomized stochastic gradient (RSG) method, for solving an important class of nonlinear (possibly nonconvex) stochastic programming (SP) problems.…
In this paper, we modify the adaptive cubic regularization method for large-scale unconstrained optimization problem by using a real positive definite scalar matrix to approximate the exact Hessian. Combining with the nonmonotone technique,…
High-order tensor methods for solving both convex and nonconvex optimization problems have generated significant research interest, leading to algorithms with optimal global rates of convergence and local rates that are faster than Newton's…
A sequential quadratic optimization algorithm is proposed for solving smooth nonlinear equality constrained optimization problems in which the objective function is defined by an expectation of a stochastic function. The algorithmic…
We analyze convergence rates of stochastic optimization procedures for non-smooth convex optimization problems. By combining randomized smoothing techniques with accelerated gradient methods, we obtain convergence rates of stochastic…
While first-order optimization methods such as stochastic gradient descent (SGD) are popular in machine learning (ML), they come with well-known deficiencies, including relatively-slow convergence, sensitivity to the settings of…
We study stochastic algorithms for solving nonconvex optimization problems with a convex yet possibly nonsmooth regularizer, which find wide applications in many practical machine learning applications. However, compared to asynchronous…
In this paper, we study stochastic non-convex optimization with non-convex random functions. Recent studies on non-convex optimization revolve around establishing second-order convergence, i.e., converging to a nearly second-order optimal…
Momentum is a popular technique to accelerate the convergence in practical training, and its impact on convergence guarantee has been well-studied for first-order algorithms. However, such a successful acceleration technique has not yet…
We propose a new first-order method for minimizing nonconvex functions with Lipschitz continuous gradients and H\"older continuous Hessians. The proposed algorithm is a heavy-ball method equipped with two particular restart mechanisms. It…
An algorithm is proposed for solving stochastic and finite sum minimization problems. Based on a trust region methodology, the algorithm employs normalized steps, at least as long as the norms of the stochastic gradient estimates are within…
We present a finite-time analysis of two smoothed functional stochastic approximation algorithms for simulation-based optimization. The first is a two time-scale gradient-based method, while the second is a three time-scale Newton-based…
We propose an approach to construction of robust non-Euclidean iterative algorithms for convex composite stochastic optimization based on truncation of stochastic gradients. For such algorithms, we establish sub-Gaussian confidence bounds…
We study the performance of stochastic first-order methods for finding saddle points of convex-concave functions. A notorious challenge faced by such methods is that the gradients can grow arbitrarily large during optimization, which may…
We propose a new method for unconstrained optimization of a smooth and strongly convex function, which attains the optimal rate of convergence of Nesterov's accelerated gradient descent. The new algorithm has a simple geometric…
This paper takes an initial step to systematically investigate the generalization bounds of algorithms for solving nonconvex-(strongly)-concave (NC-SC/NC-C) stochastic minimax optimization measured by the stationarity of primal functions.…
Gradient-based minimax optimal algorithms have greatly promoted the development of continuous optimization and machine learning. One seminal work due to Yurii Nesterov [Nes83a] established $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(\sqrt{L/\mu})$ gradient…
In this paper, we present a stochastic gradient algorithm for minimizing a smooth objective function that is an expectation over noisy cost samples, and only the latter are observed for any given parameter. Our algorithm employs a gradient…
We develop a novel framework to study smooth and strongly convex optimization algorithms, both deterministic and stochastic. Focusing on quadratic functions we are able to examine optimization algorithms as a recursive application of linear…