Related papers: Aligning Points to Lines: Provable Approximations
In multi-objective optimization, computing the entire non-dominated set (also known as the Pareto front or the Pareto frontier) is often intractable. However, for any multiplicative factor greater than one, an approximation set can be…
The $\ell_p$ linear regression problem is to minimize $f(x)=||Ax-b||_p$ over $x\in\mathbb{R}^d$, where $A\in\mathbb{R}^{n\times d}$, $b\in \mathbb{R}^n$, and $p>0$. To avoid overfitting and bound $||x||_2$, the constrained $\ell_p$…
We show that computing even very coarse approximations of critical points is intractable for simple classes of nonconvex functions. More concretely, we prove that if there exists a polynomial-time algorithm that takes as input a polynomial…
We investigate a class of composite nonconvex functions, where the outer function is the sum of univariate extended-real-valued convex functions and the inner function is the limit of difference-of-convex functions. A notable feature of…
We study approximation algorithms for the following three string measures that are widely used in practice: edit distance (ED), longest common subsequence (LCS), and longest increasing sequence (LIS). All three problems can be solved…
We develop fixed-point algorithms for the approximation of structured matrices with rank penalties. In particular we use these fixed-point algorithms for making approximations by sums of exponentials, or frequency estimation. For the basic…
Our contribution in this paper is two folded. We consider first the case of linear programming with real coefficients and give a method which allows the computation of a new upper bound on the distance from the origin to a feasible point.…
Inspired by regularization techniques in statistics and machine learning, we study complementary composite minimization in the stochastic setting. This problem corresponds to the minimization of the sum of a (weakly) smooth function endowed…
Many convex problems in machine learning and computer science share the same form: \begin{align*} \min_{x} \sum_{i} f_i( A_i x + b_i), \end{align*} where $f_i$ are convex functions on $\mathbb{R}^{n_i}$ with constant $n_i$, $A_i \in…
Longest common subsequence ($\mathsf{LCS}$) is a classic and central problem in combinatorial optimization. While $\mathsf{LCS}$ admits a quadratic time solution, recent evidence suggests that solving the problem may be impossible in truly…
We develop a family of accelerated stochastic algorithms that minimize sums of convex functions. Our algorithms improve upon the fastest running time for empirical risk minimization (ERM), and in particular linear least-squares regression,…
Least squares approximation is a technique to find an approximate solution to a system of linear equations that has no exact solution. In a typical setting, one lets $n$ be the number of constraints and $d$ be the number of variables, with…
This paper presents a stochastic block-coordinate proximal Newton method for minimizing the sum of a blockwise Lipschitz-continuously differentiable function and a separable nonsmooth convex function. At each iteration, the method randomly…
The classical multi-set split feasibility problem seeks a point in the intersection of finitely many closed convex domain constraints, whose image under a linear mapping also lies in the intersection of finitely many closed convex range…
We solve the problem of best approximation by partial isometries of given rank to an arbitrary rectangular matrix, when the distance is measured in any unitarily invariant norm. In the case where the norm is strictly convex, we parametrize…
A computationally efficient method to solve non-convex programming problems with linear equality constraints is presented. The proposed method is based on a recursively feasible and descending sequential convex programming procedure proven…
Approximations of optimization problems arise in computational procedures and sensitivity analysis. The resulting effect on solutions can be significant, with even small approximations of components of a problem translating into large…
We study randomized sketching methods for approximately solving least-squares problem with a general convex constraint. The quality of a least-squares approximation can be assessed in different ways: either in terms of the value of the…
Most systems and learning algorithms optimize average performance or average loss -- one reason being computational complexity. However, many objectives of practical interest are more complex than simply average loss. This arises, for…
In this work, we study the problem of finding approximate, with minimum support set, solutions to matrix max-plus equations, which we call sparse approximate solutions. We show how one can obtain such solutions efficiently and in polynomial…