Related papers: Stochastically Controlled Stochastic Gradient for …
We propose a new stochastic gradient method for optimizing the sum of a finite set of smooth functions, where the sum is strongly convex. While standard stochastic gradient methods converge at sublinear rates for this problem, the proposed…
We address the application of stochastic optimization methods for the simultaneous control of parameter-dependent systems. In particular, we focus on the classical Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) approach of Robbins and Monro, and on the…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) gives an optimal convergence rate when minimizing convex stochastic objectives $f(x)$. However, in terms of making the gradients small, the original SGD does not give an optimal rate, even when $f(x)$ is…
The stochastic proximal gradient method is a powerful generalization of the widely used stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method and has found numerous applications in Machine Learning. However, it is notoriously known that this method…
The paper studies the solution of stochastic optimization problems in which approximations to the gradient and Hessian are obtained through subsampling. We first consider Newton-like methods that employ these approximations and discuss how…
This paper presents a novel stochastic gradient descent algorithm for constrained optimization. The proposed algorithm randomly samples constraints and components of the finite sum objective function and relies on a relaxed logarithmic…
The conjugate gradient (CG) method is a classic Krylov subspace method for solving symmetric positive definite linear systems. We introduce an analogous semi-conjugate gradient (SCG) method for unsymmetric positive definite linear systems.…
We study projection-free methods for functional constrained optimization with convex or smooth nonconvex objectives. Such problems arise in applications such as portfolio optimization and radiation therapy planning, where risk-aware…
Variance reduction techniques such as SPIDER/SARAH/STORM have been extensively studied to improve the convergence rates of stochastic non-convex optimization, which usually maintain and update a sequence of estimators for a single function…
We study a stochastic and distributed algorithm for nonconvex problems whose objective consists of a sum of $N$ nonconvex $L_i/N$-smooth functions, plus a nonsmooth regularizer. The proposed NonconvEx primal-dual SpliTTing (NESTT) algorithm…
This paper deals with the minimization of large sum of convex functions by Inexact Newton (IN) methods employing subsampled functions, gradients and Hessian approximations. The Conjugate Gradient method is used to compute the inexact Newton…
We study the Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) method in nonconvex optimization problems from the point of view of approximating diffusion processes. We prove rigorously that the diffusion process can approximate the SGD algorithm weakly…
We introduce a new approach to develop stochastic optimization algorithms for a class of stochastic composite and possibly nonconvex optimization problems. The main idea is to combine two stochastic estimators to create a new hybrid one. We…
We consider stochastic optimal control of linear dynamical systems with additive non-Gaussian disturbance. We propose a novel, sampling-free approach, based on Fourier transformations and convex optimization, to cast the stochastic optimal…
Stochastic gradient algorithms estimate the gradient based on only one or a few samples and enjoy low computational cost per iteration. They have been widely used in large-scale optimization problems. However, stochastic gradient algorithms…
This study proposes a method for designing stabilizing suboptimal controllers for nonlinear stochastic systems. These systems include time-invariant stochastic parameters that represent uncertainty of dynamics, posing two key difficulties…
In this paper, we discuss the problem of minimizing the sum of two convex functions: a smooth function plus a non-smooth function. Further, the smooth part can be expressed by the average of a large number of smooth component functions, and…
Recently, convex nested stochastic composite optimization (NSCO) has received considerable attention for its applications in reinforcement learning and risk-averse optimization. The current NSCO algorithms have worse stochastic oracle…
We propose two novel conditional gradient-based methods for solving structured stochastic convex optimization problems with a large number of linear constraints. Instances of this template naturally arise from SDP-relaxations of…
We study the performance of stochastic first-order methods for finding saddle points of convex-concave functions. A notorious challenge faced by such methods is that the gradients can grow arbitrarily large during optimization, which may…