Related papers: Random directions stochastic approximation with de…
Due to the limited number of bits in floating-point or fixed-point arithmetic, rounding is a necessary step in many computations. Although rounding methods can be tailored for different applications, round-off errors are generally…
Stochastic optimization algorithms with variance reduction have proven successful for minimizing large finite sums of functions. Unfortunately, these techniques are unable to deal with stochastic perturbations of input data, induced for…
We introduce a hybrid stochastic estimator to design stochastic gradient algorithms for solving stochastic optimization problems. Such a hybrid estimator is a convex combination of two existing biased and unbiased estimators and leads to…
Sequential decision problems in applications such as manipulation in warehouses, multi-step meal preparation, and routing in autonomous vehicle networks often involve reasoning about uncertainty, planning over discrete modes as well as…
We present a finite-time analysis of two smoothed functional stochastic approximation algorithms for simulation-based optimization. The first is a two time-scale gradient-based method, while the second is a three time-scale Newton-based…
We introduce Adam, an algorithm for first-order gradient-based optimization of stochastic objective functions, based on adaptive estimates of lower-order moments. The method is straightforward to implement, is computationally efficient, has…
We are interested in solving convex optimization problems with large numbers of constraints. Randomized algorithms, such as random constraint sampling, have been very successful in giving nearly optimal solutions to such problems. In this…
Stochastic first-order methods are standard for training large-scale machine learning models. Random behavior may cause a particular run of an algorithm to result in a highly suboptimal objective value, whereas theoretical guarantees are…
We develop a new algorithm for non-convex stochastic optimization that finds an $\epsilon$-critical point in the optimal $O(\epsilon^{-3})$ stochastic gradient and Hessian-vector product computations. Our algorithm uses Hessian-vector…
We propose a stochastic extension of the primal-dual hybrid gradient algorithm studied by Chambolle and Pock in 2011 to solve saddle point problems that are separable in the dual variable. The analysis is carried out for general…
We consider a class of stochastic gradient optimization schemes. Assuming that the objective function is strongly convex, we prove weak error estimates which are uniform in time for the error between the solution of the numerical scheme,…
In this work, we consider solving optimization problems with a stochastic objective and deterministic equality constraints. We propose a Trust-Region Sequential Quadratic Programming method to find both first- and second-order stationary…
We provide a framework for computing the exact worst-case performance of any algorithm belonging to a broad class of oracle-based first-order methods for composite convex optimization, including those performing explicit, projected,…
Motion planning under differential constraints is a classic problem in robotics. To date, the state of the art is represented by sampling-based techniques, with the Rapidly-exploring Random Tree algorithm as a leading example. Yet, the…
We describe a new approach for managing aleatoric uncertainty in the Reinforcement Learning (RL) paradigm. Instead of selecting actions according to a single statistic, we propose a distributional method based on the second-order stochastic…
The work relates to a new way for analysis of one-dimensional stochastic systems, based on consideration of its higher order difference structure. From this point of view, the deterministic and random processes are analyzed. A new numerical…
We introduce a novel method to compute a rank $m$ approximation of the inverse of the Hessian matrix in the distributed regime. By leveraging the differences in gradients and parameters of multiple Workers, we are able to efficiently…
Two classes of methods have been proposed for escaping from saddle points with one using the second-order information carried by the Hessian and the other adding the noise into the first-order information. The existing analysis for…
We use a rank one Gaussian perturbation to derive a smooth stochastic approximation of the maximum eigenvalue function. We then combine this smoothing result with an optimal smooth stochastic optimization algorithm to produce an efficient…
In this work, to efficiently help escape the stationary and saddle points, we propose, analyze, and generalize a stochastic strategy performed as an operator for a first-order gradient descent algorithm in order to increase the target…