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Gradient-based iterative optimization methods are the workhorse of modern machine learning. They crucially rely on careful tuning of parameters like learning rate and momentum. However, one typically sets them using heuristic approaches…
Neural networks are usually trained by some form of stochastic gradient descent (SGD)). A number of strategies are in common use intended to improve SGD optimization, such as learning rate schedules, momentum, and batching. These are…
Stochastic-gradient-based optimization has been a core enabling methodology in applications to large-scale problems in machine learning and related areas. Despite the progress, the gap between theory and practice remains significant, with…
We present a novel class of projected gradient (PG) methods for minimizing a smooth but not necessarily convex function over a convex compact set. We first provide a novel analysis of the constant-stepsize PG method, achieving the…
Loss functions with non-isolated minima have emerged in several machine learning problems, creating a gap between theory and practice. In this paper, we formulate a new type of local convexity condition that is suitable to describe the…
In this paper, we proposed a new technique, {\em variance controlled stochastic gradient} (VCSG), to improve the performance of the stochastic variance reduced gradient (SVRG) algorithm. To avoid over-reducing the variance of gradient by…
We consider solving nonconvex composite optimization problems in which the sum of a smooth function and a nonsmooth function is minimized. Many of convergence analyses of proximal gradient-type methods rely on global descent property…
Calibration of large-scale differential equation models to observational or experimental data is a widespread challenge throughout applied sciences and engineering. A crucial bottleneck in state-of-the art calibration methods is the…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a popular and efficient method with wide applications in training deep neural nets and other nonconvex models. While the behavior of SGD is well understood in the convex learning setting, the existing…
Classical stochastic gradient methods are well suited for minimizing expected-value objective functions. However, they do not apply to the minimization of a nonlinear function involving expected values or a composition of two expected-value…
We propose a statistical adaptive procedure called SALSA for automatically scheduling the learning rate (step size) in stochastic gradient methods. SALSA first uses a smoothed stochastic line-search procedure to gradually increase the…
In centralized settings, it is well known that stochastic gradient descent (SGD) avoids saddle points and converges to local minima in nonconvex problems. However, similar guarantees are lacking for distributed first-order algorithms. The…
We propose a new variant of AMSGrad, a popular adaptive gradient based optimization algorithm widely used for training deep neural networks. Our algorithm adds prior knowledge about the sequence of consecutive mini-batch gradients and…
A recent article introduced thecontinuous stochastic gradient method (CSG) for the efficient solution of a class of stochastic optimization problems. While the applicability of known stochastic gradient type methods is typically limited to…
A number of optimization approaches have been proposed for optimizing nonconvex objectives (e.g. deep learning models), such as batch gradient descent, stochastic gradient descent and stochastic variance reduced gradient descent. Theory…
Langevin algorithms are gradient descent methods with additive noise. They have been used for decades in Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling, optimization, and learning. Their convergence properties for unconstrained non-convex…
We propose an adaptive accelerated gradient method for solving smooth convex optimization problems. The method incorporates a scheme to determine the step size adaptively, by means of a local estimation of the smoothness constant, which is…
We present two new remarkably simple stochastic second-order methods for minimizing the average of a very large number of sufficiently smooth and strongly convex functions. The first is a stochastic variant of Newton's method (SN), and the…
We present two stochastic descent algorithms that apply to unconstrained optimization and are particularly efficient when the objective function is slow to evaluate and gradients are not easily obtained, as in some PDE-constrained…
We study nonconvex finite-sum problems and analyze stochastic variance reduced gradient (SVRG) methods for them. SVRG and related methods have recently surged into prominence for convex optimization given their edge over stochastic gradient…