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Large-scale nonconvex optimization problems are ubiquitous in modern machine learning, and among practitioners interested in solving them, Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) reigns supreme. We revisit the analysis of SGD in the nonconvex…
The convergence analysis of optimization algorithms using continuous-time dynamical systems has received much attention in recent years. In this paper, we investigate applications of these systems to analyze the convergence of linearized…
This paper focuses on the distributed optimization of stochastic saddle point problems. The first part of the paper is devoted to lower bounds for the centralized and decentralized distributed methods for smooth (strongly) convex-(strongly)…
Convex-concave min-max problems are ubiquitous in machine learning, and people usually utilize first-order methods (e.g., gradient descent ascent) to find the optimal solution. One feature which separates convex-concave min-max problems…
Devising efficient algorithms that track the optimizers of continuously varying convex optimization problems is key in many applications. A possible strategy is to sample the time-varying problem at constant rate and solve the resulting…
Randomized algorithms are important for solving large-scale optimization problems. In this paper, we propose a fast sketching algorithm for least square problems regularized by convex or nonconvex regularization functions, Sketching for…
This work aims to solve a stochastic nonconvex nonsmooth composite optimization problem. Previous works on composite optimization problem requires the major part to satisfy Lipschitz smoothness or some relaxed smoothness conditions, which…
In this work we aim to solve a convex-concave saddle point problem, where the convex-concave coupling function is smooth in one variable and nonsmooth in the other and not assumed to be linear in either. The problem is augmented by a…
We propose a sequential quadratic programming (SQP) method that can incorporate adaptive sampling for stochastic nonsmooth nonconvex optimization problems with upper-C^2 objectives. Upper-$\Ctwo$ functions can be viewed as…
In this paper, a convex optimization-based method is proposed for numerically solving dynamic programs in continuous state and action spaces. The key idea is to approximate the output of the Bellman operator at a particular state by the…
A novel Follow-the-Perturbed-Leader type algorithm is proposed and analyzed for solving general long-term constrained optimization problems in an online manner, where the target and constraint functions are oblivious adversarially generated…
In this paper we study the convex problem of optimizing the sum of a smooth function and a compactly supported non-smooth term with a specific separable form. We analyze the block version of the generalized conditional gradient method when…
In machine learning, nonconvex optimization problems with multiple local optimums are often encountered. Graduated Optimization Algorithm (GOA) is a popular heuristic method to obtain global optimums of nonconvex problems through…
Many optimal and robust control problems are nonconvex and potentially nonsmooth in their policy optimization forms. In Part II of this paper, we introduce a new and unified Extended Convex Lifting (ECL) framework to reveal hidden convexity…
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…
In this paper, we consider a class of structured nonconvex nonsmooth optimization problems, in which the objective function is formed by the sum of a possibly nonsmooth nonconvex function and a differentiable function whose gradient is…
Motivated by applications in optimization and machine learning, we consider stochastic quasi-Newton (SQN) methods for solving stochastic optimization problems. In the literature, the convergence analysis of these algorithms relies on strong…
Two characteristics that make convex decomposition algorithms attractive are simplicity of operations and generation of parallelizable structures. In principle, these schemes require that all coordinates update at the same time, i.e., they…
Two optimization algorithms are proposed for solving a stochastic programming problem for which the objective function is given in the form of the expectation of convex functions and the constraint set is defined by the intersection of…
The concave utility in the Network Utility Maximization (NUM) problem is only suitable for elastic flows. However, the networks with the multiclass traffic, the utility of inelastic traffic is usually represented by the sigmoidal function…