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First-order methods for stochastic optimization have undeniable relevance, in part due to their pivotal role in machine learning. Variance reduction for these algorithms has become an important research topic. In contrast to common…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-09-08 Manuel Madeira , Renato Negrinho , João Xavier , Pedro M. Q. Aguiar

We prove novel convergence results for a stochastic proximal gradient algorithm suitable for solving a large class of convex optimization problems, where a convex objective function is given by the sum of a smooth and a possibly non-smooth…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-08-11 Lorenzo Rosasco , Silvia Villa , Bang Công Vũ

For minimizing a strongly convex objective function subject to linear inequality constraints, we consider a penalty approach that allows one to utilize stochastic methods for problems with a large number of constraints and/or objective…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-02-16 Meng Li , Paul Grigas , Alper Atamturk

We lower bound the complexity of finding $\epsilon$-stationary points (with gradient norm at most $\epsilon$) using stochastic first-order methods. In a well-studied model where algorithms access smooth, potentially non-convex functions…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-03-01 Yossi Arjevani , Yair Carmon , John C. Duchi , Dylan J. Foster , Nathan Srebro , Blake Woodworth

In this paper, a novel stochastic extra-step quasi-Newton method is developed to solve a class of nonsmooth nonconvex composite optimization problems. We assume that the gradient of the smooth part of the objective function can only be…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-10-22 Minghan Yang , Andre Milzarek , Zaiwen Wen , Tong Zhang

In this paper, we propose a new method based on the Sliding Algorithm from Lan(2016, 2019) for the convex composite optimization problem that includes two terms: smooth one and non-smooth one. Our method uses the stochastic noised…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-06-16 Aleksandr Beznosikov , Eduard Gorbunov , Alexander Gasnikov

The goal of this paper is to investigate an approach for derivative-free optimization that has not received sufficient attention in the literature and is yet one of the simplest to implement and parallelize. It consists of computing…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-02-22 Hao-Jun Michael Shi , Melody Qiming Xuan , Figen Oztoprak , Jorge Nocedal

We propose dynamic sampled stochastic approximation (SA) methods for stochastic optimization with a heavy-tailed distribution (with finite 2nd moment). The objective is the sum of a smooth convex function with a convex regularizer.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-05-26 Alejandro Jofré , Philip Thompson

We propose an adaptive proximal gradient method for minimizing the sum of two functions, where one is a simple convex function, and the other belongs to one of the three classes: nonconvex smooth, convex nonsmooth, or convex smooth. The key…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-08 Zimeng Wang , Alp Yurtsever

This paper investigates projection-free algorithms for stochastic constrained multi-level optimization. In this context, the objective function is a nested composition of several smooth functions, and the decision set is closed and convex.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-07 Wei Jiang , Sifan Yang , Wenhao Yang , Yibo Wang , Yuanyu Wan , Lijun Zhang

This paper is devoted to the study of the solution of a stochastic convex black box optimization problem. Where the black box problem means that the gradient-free oracle only returns the value of objective function, not its gradient. We…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-04-18 Aleksandr Lobanov

We consider the problem of global optimization of an unknown non-convex smooth function with zeroth-order feedback. In this setup, an algorithm is allowed to adaptively query the underlying function at different locations and receives noisy…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-03-26 Yining Wang , Sivaraman Balakrishnan , Aarti Singh

We study the problem of zero-order optimization of a strongly convex function. The goal is to find the minimizer of the function by a sequential exploration of its values, under measurement noise. We study the impact of higher order…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-28 Arya Akhavan , Massimiliano Pontil , Alexandre B. Tsybakov

This paper explores a method for solving constrained optimization problems when the derivatives of the objective function are unavailable, while the derivatives of the constraints are known. We allow the objective and constraint function to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-20 Melody Qiming Xuan , Jorge Nocedal

This paper proposes a stochastic gradient descent method with an adaptive Gaussian noise term for the global minimization of nearly convex functions, which are nonconvex and possess multiple strict local minimizers. The noise term,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-08-05 Chenglong Bao , Liang Chen , Weizhi Shao

This paper considers the smooth bilevel optimization in which the lower-level problem is strongly convex and the upper-level problem is possibly nonconvex. We focus on the stochastic setting where the algorithm can access the unbiased…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-16 Zhuanghua Liu , Luo Luo

This paper proposes a novel proximal-gradient algorithm for a decentralized optimization problem with a composite objective containing smooth and non-smooth terms. Specifically, the smooth and nonsmooth terms are dealt with by gradient and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-02-02 Zhi Li , Wei Shi , Ming Yan

A fully stochastic second-order adaptive-regularization method for unconstrained nonconvex optimization is presented which never computes the objective-function value, but yet achieves the optimal $\mathcal{O}(\epsilon^{-3/2})$ complexity…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-22 Serge Gratton , Sadok Jerad , Philippe L. Toint

This paper studies non-smooth problems of convex stochastic optimization. Using the smoothing technique based on the replacement of the function value at the considered point by the averaged function value over a ball (in $l_1$-norm or…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-05-23 Aleksandr Lobanov , Belal Alashqar , Darina Dvinskikh , Alexander Gasnikov

Hierarchical optimization refers to problems with interdependent decision variables and objectives, such as minimax and bilevel formulations. While various algorithms have been proposed, existing methods and analyses lack adaptivity in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-27 Xiaochuan Gong , Jie Hao , Mingrui Liu