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We consider a family of algorithms that successively sample and minimize simple stochastic models of the objective function. We show that under reasonable conditions on approximation quality and regularity of the models, any such algorithm…
In this paper, we propose objective-function-free (OFF) variants of the proximal Newton method for nonconvex composite optimization problems and the regularized Newton method for unconstrained optimization problems, respectively, using…
In this paper we consider convex optimization problems with stochastic composite objective function subject to (possibly) infinite intersection of constraints. The objective function is expressed in terms of expectation operator over a sum…
In this study, we consider an optimization problem with uncertainty dependent on decision variables, which has recently attracted attention due to its importance in machine learning and pricing applications. In this problem, the gradient of…
An Adagrad-inspired class of algorithms for smooth unconstrained optimization is presented in which the objective function is never evaluated and yet the gradient norms decrease at least as fast as $\calO(1/\sqrt{k+1})$ while second-order…
In this paper, we consider Frank-Wolfe-based algorithms for composite convex optimization problems with objective involving a logarithmically-homogeneous, self-concordant functions. Recent Frank-Wolfe-based methods for this class of…
We consider smooth convex minimization over compact convex sets, i.e., $\min_{x \in C} f(x)$ with the (vanilla) Frank-Wolfe algorithm. Well-known lower bounds establish a worst-case $\Omega(1/t)$ primal-gap barrier in the general smooth…
We consider the problem of minimizing a smooth and convex function over the $n$-dimensional spectrahedron -- the set of real symmetric $n\times n$ positive semidefinite matrices with unit trace, which underlies numerous applications in…
Nonsmooth nonconvex optimization problems broadly emerge in machine learning and business decision making, whereas two core challenges impede the development of efficient solution methods with finite-time convergence guarantee: the lack of…
In this paper, we present the Stochastic Origin Frank-Wolfe (SOFW) method, which is a special case of the block-coordinate Frank-Wolfe algorithm, applied to the problem of finding equilibrium flow distributions. By significantly reducing…
In this paper, we consider a distributed stochastic non-convex optimization problem, which is about minimizing a sum of $n$ local cost functions over a network with only zeroth-order information. A novel single-loop Decentralized…
Minimization of a smooth function on a sphere or, more generally, on a smooth manifold, is the simplest non-convex optimization problem. It has a lot of applications. Our goal is to propose a version of the gradient projection algorithm for…
We propose a stochastic gradient framework for solving stochastic composite convex optimization problems with (possibly) infinite number of linear inclusion constraints that need to be satisfied almost surely. We use smoothing and homotopy…
The optimal transport (OT) problem has been used widely for machine learning. It is necessary for computation of an OT problem to solve linear programming with tight mass-conservation constraints. These constraints prevent its application…
In this paper, we present a novel derivative-free optimization framework for solving unconstrained stochastic optimization problems. Many problems in fields ranging from simulation optimization to reinforcement learning involve settings…
Safe derivative-free optimization under unknown constraints is a fundamental challenge in modern learning and control. Existing zeroth-order (ZO) methods typically still assume access to a first-order oracle of the constraint functions or…
We exploit analogies between first-order algorithms for constrained optimization and non-smooth dynamical systems to design a new class of accelerated first-order algorithms for constrained optimization. Unlike Frank-Wolfe or projected…
In this paper we propose stochastic gradient-free methods and accelerated methods with momentum for solving stochastic optimization problems. All these methods rely on stochastic directions rather than stochastic gradients. We analyze the…
Zero-order (ZO) optimization is a powerful tool for dealing with realistic constraints. On the other hand, the gradient-tracking (GT) technique proved to be an efficient method for distributed optimization aiming to achieve consensus.…
We study the problem of zero-order optimization of a strongly convex function. The goal is to find the minimizer of the function by a sequential exploration of its values, under measurement noise. We study the impact of higher order…