Related papers: Optimization of Smooth Functions with Noisy Observ…
The minimization of convex functions which are only available through partial and noisy information is a key methodological problem in many disciplines. In this paper we consider convex optimization with noisy zero-th order information,…
An algorithm is proposed, analyzed, and tested for minimizing locally Lipschitz objective functions that may be nonconvex and/or nonsmooth. The algorithm, which is built upon the gradient-sampling methodology, is designed specifically for…
An adaptive regularization algorithm using inexact function and derivatives evaluations is proposed for the solution of composite nonsmooth nonconvex optimization. It is shown that this algorithm needs at most…
We study the problem of optimizing a function under a \emph{budgeted number of evaluations}. We only assume that the function is \emph{locally} smooth around one of its global optima. The difficulty of optimization is measured in terms of…
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…
Optimization of convex functions under stochastic zeroth-order feedback has been a major and challenging question in online learning. In this work, we consider the problem of optimizing second-order smooth and strongly convex functions…
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…
In recent years, nonconvex minimax problems have attracted significant attention due to their broad applications in machine learning, including generative adversarial networks, robust optimization and adversarial training. Most existing…
We analyze stochastic algorithms for optimizing nonconvex, nonsmooth finite-sum problems, where the nonconvex part is smooth and the nonsmooth part is convex. Surprisingly, unlike the smooth case, our knowledge of this fundamental problem…
We propose stochastic optimization algorithms that can find local minima faster than existing algorithms for nonconvex optimization problems, by exploiting the third-order smoothness to escape non-degenerate saddle points more efficiently.…
We initiate the study of nonsmooth optimization problems under bounded local subgradient variation, which postulates bounded difference between (sub)gradients in small local regions around points, in either average or maximum sense. The…
In this work, we present a globalized stochastic semismooth Newton method for solving stochastic optimization problems involving smooth nonconvex and nonsmooth convex terms in the objective function. We assume that only noisy gradient and…
It is well-known that given a smooth, bounded-from-below, and possibly nonconvex function, standard gradient-based methods can find $\epsilon$-stationary points (with gradient norm less than $\epsilon$) in $\mathcal{O}(1/\epsilon^2)$…
This paper proposes a novel technique called "successive stochastic smoothing" that optimizes nonsmooth and discontinuous functions while considering various constraints. Our methodology enables local and global optimization, making it a…
In this paper, we consider the problem of minimizing the average of a large number of nonsmooth and convex functions. Such problems often arise in typical machine learning problems as empirical risk minimization, but are computationally…
Non-convex optimization is ubiquitous in modern machine learning. Researchers devise non-convex objective functions and optimize them using off-the-shelf optimizers such as stochastic gradient descent and its variants, which leverage the…
This paper presents a tractable algorithm for estimating an unknown Lipschitz function from noisy observations and establishes an upper bound on its convergence rate. The approach extends max-affine methods from convex shape-restricted…
Interesting theoretical associations have been established by recent papers between the fields of active learning and stochastic convex optimization due to the common role of feedback in sequential querying mechanisms. In this paper, we…
Majorization-minimization schemes are a broad class of iterative methods targeting general optimization problems, including nonconvex, nonsmooth and stochastic. These algorithms minimize successively a sequence of upper bounds of the…
We study online convex optimization under stochastic sub-gradient observation faults, where we introduce adaptive algorithms with minimax optimal regret guarantees. We specifically study scenarios where our sub-gradient observations can be…