Related papers: On the Randomized Complexity of Minimizing a Conve…
We consider the fundamental problem in non-convex optimization of efficiently reaching a stationary point. In contrast to the convex case, in the long history of this basic problem, the only known theoretical results on first-order…
This paper investigates simple bilevel optimization problems where we minimize an upper-level objective over the optimal solution set of a convex lower-level objective. Existing methods for such problems either only guarantee asymptotic…
Operator convex functions defined on the positive half-line play a prominent role in the theory of quantum information, where they are used to define quantum $f$-divergences. Such functions admit integral representations in terms of…
We investigate how to solve smooth matrix optimization problems with general linear inequality constraints on the eigenvalues of a symmetric matrix. We present solution methods to obtain exact global minima for linear objective functions,…
Stochastic optimization finds a wide range of applications in operations research and management science. However, existing stochastic optimization techniques usually require the information of random samples (e.g., demands in the…
Non-convex optimization plays a key role in a growing number of machine learning applications. This motivates the identification of specialized structure that enables sharper theoretical analysis. One such identified structure is…
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…
Finite-sum optimization has wide applications in machine learning, covering important problems such as support vector machines, regression, etc. In this paper, we initiate the study of solving finite-sum optimization problems by quantum…
Min-max problems have broad applications in machine learning, including learning with non-decomposable loss and learning with robustness to data distribution. Convex-concave min-max problem is an active topic of research with efficient…
We consider minimization of functions that are compositions of convex or prox-regular functions (possibly extended-valued) with smooth vector functions. A wide variety of important optimization problems fall into this framework. We describe…
In this paper we propose a fast optimization algorithm for approximately minimizing convex quadratic functions over the intersection of affine and separable constraints (i.e., the Cartesian product of possibly nonconvex real sets). This…
A subgradient method is presented for solving general convex optimization problems, the main requirement being that a strictly-feasible point is known. A feasible sequence of iterates is generated, which converges to within user-specified…
The Douglas-Rachford algorithm (DRA) is a powerful optimization method for minimizing the sum of two convex (not necessarily smooth) functions. The vast majority of previous research dealt with the case when the sum has at least one…
This paper studies decentralized convex-concave minimax optimization problems of the form $\min_x\max_y f(x,y) \triangleq\frac{1}{m}\sum_{i=1}^m f_i(x,y)$, where $m$ is the number of agents and each local function can be written as…
We analyse the convergence of the proximal gradient algorithm for convex composite problems in the presence of gradient and proximal computational inaccuracies. We derive new tighter deterministic and probabilistic bounds that we use to…
In this work, we initiate a thorough study of parameterized graph optimization problems in the distributed setting. In a parameterized problem, an algorithm decides whether a solution of size bounded by a \emph{parameter} $k$ exists and if…
The subgradient method is one of the most fundamental algorithmic schemes for nonsmooth optimization. The existing complexity and convergence results for this method are mainly derived for Lipschitz continuous objective functions. In this…
We consider minimization of composite functions of the form $f(g(x))+h(x)$, where $f$ and $h$ are convex functions (which can be nonsmooth) and $g$ is a smooth vector mapping. In addition, we assume that $g$ is the average of finite number…
Affine matrix rank minimization problem is a fundamental problem with a lot of important applications in many fields. It is well known that this problem is combinatorial and NP-hard in general. In this paper, a continuous promoting low rank…
A descent algorithm, "Quasi-Quadratic Minimization with Memory" (QQMM), is proposed for unconstrained minimization of the sum, $F$, of a non-negative convex function, $V$, and a quadratic form. Such problems come up in regularized…