Related papers: Nonconvex Variance Reduced Optimization with Arbit…

Nonconvex-concave (NC-C) finite-sum minimax problems have wide applications in signal processing and machine learning tasks. Conventional stochastic gradient algorithms, which rely on uniform sampling for gradient estimation, often suffer…

We study distributed stochastic nonconvex optimization in multi-agent networks. We introduce a novel algorithmic framework for the distributed minimization of the sum of the expected value of a smooth (possibly nonconvex) function (the…

Techniques for reducing the variance of gradient estimates used in stochastic programming algorithms for convex finite-sum problems have received a great deal of attention in recent years. By leveraging dissipativity theory from control, we…

In the context of finite sums minimization, variance reduction techniques are widely used to improve the performance of state-of-the-art stochastic gradient methods. Their practical impact is clear, as well as their theoretical properties.…

We study the unconstrained minimization of a smooth and strongly convex population loss function under a stochastic oracle that introduces both additive and multiplicative noise; this is a canonical and widely-studied setting that arises…

In this paper, for solving a broad class of large-scale nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization problems, we propose a stochastic two step inertial Bregman proximal alternating linearized minimization (STiBPALM) algorithm with variance-reduced…

Adaptive importance sampling for stochastic optimization is a promising approach that offers improved convergence through variance reduction. In this work, we propose a new framework for variance reduction that enables the use of mixtures…

We describe a novel optimization method for finite sums (such as empirical risk minimization problems) building on the recently introduced SAGA method. Our method achieves an accelerated convergence rate on strongly convex smooth problems.…

Optimization algorithms and Monte Carlo sampling algorithms have provided the computational foundations for the rapid growth in applications of statistical machine learning in recent years. There is, however, limited theoretical…

Stochastic majorization-minimization (SMM) is a class of stochastic optimization algorithms that proceed by sampling new data points and minimizing a recursive average of surrogate functions of an objective function. The surrogates are…

Sample-average approximations (SAA) are a practical means of finding approximate solutions of stochastic programming problems involving an extremely large (or infinite) number of scenarios. SAA can also be used to find estimates of a lower…

The application of stochastic variance reduction to optimization has shown remarkable recent theoretical and practical success. The applicability of these techniques to the hard non-convex optimization problems encountered during training…

This paper proposes a new family of algorithms for training neural networks (NNs). These are based on recent developments in the field of non-convex optimization, going under the general name of successive convex approximation (SCA)…

Stochastic variance reduced methods have shown strong performance in solving finite-sum problems. However, these methods usually require the users to manually tune the step-size, which is time-consuming or even infeasible for some…

We derive bounds on the sample complexity of empirical risk minimization (ERM) in the context of minimizing non-convex risks that admit the strict saddle property. Recent progress in non-convex optimization has yielded efficient algorithms…

We study optimization algorithms based on variance reduction for stochastic gradient descent (SGD). Remarkable recent progress has been made in this direction through development of algorithms like SAG, SVRG, SAGA. These algorithms have…

We analyze stochastic gradient algorithms for optimizing nonconvex, nonsmooth finite-sum problems. In particular, the objective function is given by the summation of a differentiable (possibly nonconvex) component, together with a possibly…

We revisit the sample average approximation (SAA) approach for non-convex stochastic programming. We show that applying the SAA approach to problems with expected value equality constraints does not necessarily result in asymptotic…

We consider the problem of stochastic convex optimization under convex constraints. We analyze the behavior of a natural variance reduced proximal gradient (VRPG) algorithm for this problem. Our main result is a non-asymptotic guarantee for…

Stochastic gradient descent type methods are ubiquitous in machine learning, but they are only applicable to the optimization of differentiable functions. Proximal algorithms are more general and applicable to nonsmooth functions. We…