Related papers: SPIDER: Near-Optimal Non-Convex Optimization via S…
We focus on analyzing the classical stochastic projected gradient methods under a general dependent data sampling scheme for constrained smooth nonconvex optimization. We show the worst-case rate of convergence $\tilde{O}(t^{-1/4})$ and…
This paper optimizes the step coefficients of first-order methods for smooth convex minimization in terms of the worst-case convergence bound (i.e., efficiency) of the decrease in the gradient norm. This work is based on the performance…
In this paper we revisit the DP stochastic convex optimization (SCO) problem. For convex smooth losses, it is well-known that the canonical DP-SGD (stochastic gradient descent) achieves the optimal rate of $O\left(\frac{LR}{\sqrt{n}} +…
Derivative-free optimization (DFO) is vital in solving complex optimization problems where only noisy function evaluations are available through an oracle. Within this domain, DFO via finite difference (FD) approximation has emerged as a…
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…
We consider a wide range of regularized stochastic minimization problems with two regularization terms, one of which is composed with a linear function. This optimization model abstracts a number of important applications in artificial…
We propose a novel stochastic smoothing accelerated gradient (SSAG) method for general constrained nonsmooth convex composite optimization, and analyze the convergence rates. The SSAG method allows various smoothing techniques, and can deal…
Zeroth-order optimization (ZOO) is an important framework for stochastic optimization when gradients are unavailable or expensive to compute. A potential limitation of existing ZOO methods is the bias inherent in most gradient estimators…
We consider stochastic convex optimization problems with affine constraints and develop several methods using either primal or dual approach to solve it. In the primal case, we use a special penalization technique to make the initial…
In order to approximate solutions of stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs) that do not possess commutative noise, one has to simulate the involved iterated stochastic integrals. Recently, two approximation methods for iterated…
We present new algorithms for optimizing non-smooth, non-convex stochastic objectives based on a novel analysis technique. This improves the current best-known complexity for finding a $(\delta,\epsilon)$-stationary point from…
This paper presents an algorithmic framework for solving unconstrained stochastic optimization problems using only stochastic function evaluations. We employ central finite-difference based gradient estimation methods to approximate the…
Optimization algorithms are pivotal in advancing various scientific and industrial fields but often encounter obstacles such as trapping in local minima, saddle points, and plateaus (flat regions), which makes the convergence to reasonable…
We consider the nonsmooth convex composition optimization problem where the objective is a composition of two finite-sum functions and analyze stochastic compositional variance reduced gradient (SCVRG) methods for them. SCVRG and its…
Incremental Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithms were introduced to design EM for the large scale learning framework by avoiding the full data set to be processed at each iteration. Nevertheless, these algorithms all assume that the…
The study of optimal control problems under uncertainty plays an important role in scientific numerical simulations. This class of optimization problems is strongly utilized in engineering, biology and finance. In this paper, a stochastic…
This work considers stochastic optimization problems in which the objective function values can only be computed by a blackbox corrupted by some random noise following an unknown distribution. The proposed method is based on sequential…
We develop universal gradient methods for Stochastic Convex Optimization (SCO). Our algorithms automatically adapt not only to the oracle's noise but also to the H\"older smoothness of the objective function without a priori knowledge of…
This work proposes a framework, embedded within the Performance Estimation framework (PEP), for obtaining worst-case performance guarantees on stochastic first-order methods. Given a first-order method, a function class, and a noise model…
We study the differentially private Empirical Risk Minimization (ERM) and Stochastic Convex Optimization (SCO) problems for non-smooth convex functions. We get a (nearly) optimal bound on the excess empirical risk and excess population loss…