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We analyze the variance of stochastic gradients along negative curvature directions in certain non-convex machine learning models and show that stochastic gradients exhibit a strong component along these directions. Furthermore, we show…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-09-18 Hadi Daneshmand , Jonas Kohler , Aurelien Lucchi , Thomas Hofmann

We study the Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) method in nonconvex optimization problems from the point of view of approximating diffusion processes. We prove rigorously that the diffusion process can approximate the SGD algorithm weakly…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-03-06 Wenqing Hu , Chris Junchi Li , Lei Li , Jian-Guo Liu

While significant theoretical progress has been achieved, unveiling the generalization mystery of overparameterized neural networks still remains largely elusive. In this paper, we study the generalization behavior of shallow neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-21 Yunwen Lei , Rong Jin , Yiming Ying

Training neural networks requires optimizing a loss function that may be highly irregular, and in particular neither convex nor smooth. Popular training algorithms are based on stochastic gradient descent with momentum (SGDM), for which…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Qinzi Zhang , Ashok Cutkosky

Stochastic mirror descent (SMD) is a fairly new family of algorithms that has recently found a wide range of applications in optimization, machine learning, and control. It can be considered a generalization of the classical stochastic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-04-04 Navid Azizan , Babak Hassibi

Asynchronous stochastic gradient descent (ASGD) is a popular parallel optimization algorithm in machine learning. Most theoretical analysis on ASGD take a discrete view and prove upper bounds for their convergence rates. However, the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-05-09 Li He , Qi Meng , Wei Chen , Zhi-Ming Ma , Tie-Yan Liu

Distributed optimization plays an important role in modern large-scale machine learning and data processing systems by optimizing the utilization of computational resources. One of the classical and popular approaches is Local Stochastic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-19 Andrey Sadchikov , Savelii Chezhegov , Aleksandr Beznosikov , Alexander Gasnikov

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and its variants have established themselves as the go-to algorithms for large-scale machine learning problems with independent samples due to their generalization performance and intrinsic computational…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-08-25 Hao Chen , Lili Zheng , Raed Al Kontar , Garvesh Raskutti

We propose a projected semi-stochastic gradient descent method with mini-batch for improving both the theoretical complexity and practical performance of the general stochastic gradient descent method (SGD). We are able to prove linear…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-05-08 Jie Liu , Martin Takac

We study stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with gradient clipping on convex functions under a generalized smoothness assumption called $(L_0,L_1)$-smoothness. Using gradient clipping, we establish a high probability convergence rate that…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-06-04 Ofir Gaash , Kfir Yehuda Levy , Yair Carmon

We study convergence properties of Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) for convex objectives without assumptions on smoothness or strict convexity. We consider the question of establishing that with high probability the objective evaluated at…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-10-23 Andrea Schioppa

Gradient clipping is commonly used in training deep neural networks partly due to its practicability in relieving the exploding gradient problem. Recently, \citet{zhang2019gradient} show that clipped (stochastic) Gradient Descent (GD)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-30 Bohang Zhang , Jikai Jin , Cong Fang , Liwei Wang

Mini-batch stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and variants thereof approximate the objective function's gradient with a small number of training examples, aka the batch size. Small batch sizes require little computation for each model update…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-28 Scott Sievert , Shrey Shah

This paper theoretically reanalyzes the convergence of the mini-batch stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for a structured minimization problem involving a finite-sum function with its gradient being stochastically approximated, and an…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-07 Runze Li , Jintao Xu , Wenxun Xing

We aim to make stochastic gradient descent (SGD) adaptive to (i) the noise $\sigma^2$ in the stochastic gradients and (ii) problem-dependent constants. When minimizing smooth, strongly-convex functions with condition number $\kappa$, we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-24 Sharan Vaswani , Benjamin Dubois-Taine , Reza Babanezhad

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is the main approach to optimizing neural networks. Several generalization properties of deep networks, such as convergence to a flatter minima, are believed to arise from SGD. This article explores the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-05 Aditya Shah , Aditya Challa , Sravan Danda , Archana Mathur , Snehanshu Saha

We investigate the convergence rates and data sample sizes required for training a machine learning model using a stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm, where data points are sampled based on either their loss value or uncertainty…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-26 Daniel Haimovich , Dima Karamshuk , Fridolin Linder , Niek Tax , Milan Vojnovic

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) methods see many uses in optimization problems. Modifications to the algorithm, such as momentum-based SGD methods have been known to produce better results in certain cases. Much of this, however, is due…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-22 Eric Lu

Machine learning models trained with \emph{stochastic} gradient descent (SGD) can generalize better than those trained with deterministic gradient descent (GD). In this work, we study SGD's impact on generalization through the lens of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-09 Hongjian Lan , Yucong Liu , Florian Schäfer

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is fundamental for training deep neural networks, especially in non-convex settings. Understanding SGD's generalization properties is crucial for ensuring robust model performance on unseen data. In this…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-06-24 Wenjun Xiong , Juan Ding , Xinlei Zuo , Qizhai Li