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Current expectations from training deep learning models with gradient-based methods include: 1) transparency; 2) high convergence rates; 3) high inductive biases. While the state-of-art methods with adaptive learning rate schedules are…
Non-convex optimization problems are ubiquitous in machine learning, especially in Deep Learning. While such complex problems can often be successfully optimized in practice by using stochastic gradient descent (SGD), theoretical analysis…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) has proven effective in solving many inventory control problems with demand learning. However, it often faces the pitfall of an infeasible target inventory level that is lower than the current inventory…
We present a theoretical analysis of some popular adaptive Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) methods in the small learning rate regime. Using the stochastic modified equations framework introduced by Li et al., we derive effective…
SGD is the widely adopted method to train CNN. Conceptually it approximates the population with a randomly sampled batch; then it evenly trains batches by conducting a gradient update on every batch in an epoch. In this paper, we…
We analyze the efficacy of modern neuro-evolutionary strategies for continuous control optimization. Overall, the results collected on a wide variety of qualitatively different benchmark problems indicate that these methods are generally…
Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) for downstream tasks is an essential stage of modern AI deployment. Reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as the dominant fine-tuning paradigm, underpinning many state-of-the-art LLMs. In contrast,…
Modern machine learning is trained by stochastic gradient descent (SGD), whose performance critically depends on how the learning rate (LR) is adjusted and decreased over time. Yet existing LR regimes may be intricate, or need to tune one…
Bilevel optimization has been widely used in many machine learning applications such as hyperparameter optimization and meta learning. Recently, many simple stochastic gradient descent(SGD) type algorithms(without using momentum and…
Multi-layer neural networks are among the most powerful models in machine learning, yet the fundamental reasons for this success defy mathematical understanding. Learning a neural network requires to optimize a non-convex high-dimensional…
Despite an extensive body of literature on deep learning optimization, our current understanding of what makes an optimization algorithm effective is fragmented. In particular, we do not understand well whether enhanced optimization…
Evolution Strategies (ES) has recently emerged as a competitive alternative to reinforcement learning (RL) for large language model (LLM) fine-tuning, offering advantages through simplicity, scalability, and inference-only training.…
We study the convergence of gradient descent (GD) and stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for training $L$-hidden-layer linear residual networks (ResNets). We prove that for training deep residual networks with certain linear transformations…
State-of-the-art training algorithms for deep learning models are based on stochastic gradient descent (SGD). Recently, many variations have been explored: perturbing parameters for better accuracy (such as in Extragradient), limiting SGD…
It is widely believed that stochastic gradient descent (SGD) performs significantly worse than adaptive optimizers such as Adam in pre-training Large Language Models (LLMs). Yet the underlying reason for this gap remains unclear. In this…
Neural network has attracted great attention for a long time and many researchers are devoted to improve the effectiveness of neural network training algorithms. Though stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and other explicit gradient-based…
Deep learning networks are typically trained by Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) methods that iteratively improve the model parameters by estimating a gradient on a very small fraction of the training data. A major roadblock faced when…
We analyze the dynamics of streaming stochastic gradient descent (SGD) in the high-dimensional limit when applied to generalized linear models and multi-index models (e.g. logistic regression, phase retrieval) with general data-covariance.…
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…
This paper proposes a new optimization algorithm called Entropy-SGD for training deep neural networks that is motivated by the local geometry of the energy landscape. Local extrema with low generalization error have a large proportion of…