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Related papers: Derivative-free optimization methods

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This paper is devoted to the study (common in many applications) of the black-box optimization problem, where the black-box represents a gradient-free oracle $\tilde{f} = f(x) + \xi$ providing the objective function value with some…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-07-08 Aleksandr Lobanov

We introduce a novel distributed derivative-free optimization framework that is resilient to stragglers. The proposed method employs coded search directions at which the objective function is evaluated, and a decoding step to find the next…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2019-07-16 Burak Bartan , Mert Pilanci

This paper deals with stochastic optimization problems involving Markovian noise with a zero-order oracle. We present and analyze a novel derivative-free method for solving such problems in strongly convex smooth and non-smooth settings…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-06 Boris Prokhorov , Semyon Chebykin , Alexander Gasnikov , Aleksandr Beznosikov

A novel class of derivative-free optimization algorithms is developed. The main idea is to utilize certain non-commutative maps in order to approximate the gradient of the objective function. Convergence properties of the novel algorithms…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-05-21 Jan Feiling , Amelie Zeller , Christian Ebenbauer

A new universal derivative-free optimization method CDOS (Conjugate Direction with Orthogonal Shift) is proposed. The CDOS method was specially developed to solve optimization tasks where the objective function and constraints are black…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2011-02-08 Sergey Moiseev

We study the impact of nonconvexity on the complexity of nonsmooth optimization, emphasizing objectives such as piecewise linear functions, which may not be weakly convex. We focus on a dimension-independent analysis, slightly modifying a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-10-11 Siyu Kong , A. S. Lewis

Derivative-free optimization has become an important technique used in machine learning for optimizing black-box models. To conduct updates without explicitly computing gradient, most current approaches iteratively sample a random search…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-08-03 Liu Liu , Minhao Cheng , Cho-Jui Hsieh , Dacheng Tao

Stochastic optimization problems with unknown decision-dependent distributions have attracted increasing attention in recent years due to its importance in applications. Since the gradient of the objective function is inaccessible as a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-30 Yuya Hikima , Akiko Takeda

Motivated by recent increased interest in optimization algorithms for non-convex optimization in application to training deep neural networks and other optimization problems in data analysis, we give an overview of recent theoretical…

This review presents modern gradient-free methods to solve convex optimization problems. By gradient-free methods, we mean those that use only (noisy) realizations of the objective value. We are motivated by various applications where…

We investigate the convergence properties of a class of iterative algorithms designed to minimize a potentially non-smooth and noisy objective function, which may be algebraically intractable and whose values may be obtained as the output…

Computation · Statistics 2025-12-04 Christophe Andrieu , Nicolas Chopin , Ettore Fincato , Mathieu Gerber

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…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-29 Runyu Zhang , Gioele Zardini , Asuman Ozdaglar , Jeff Shamma , Na Li

We consider the problem of unconstrained minimization of a smooth objective function in $\R^n$ in a setting where only function evaluations are possible. While importance sampling is one of the most popular techniques used by machine…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-04-03 Adel Bibi , El Houcine Bergou , Ozan Sener , Bernard Ghanem , Peter Richtárik

A fully stochastic second-order adaptive-regularization method for unconstrained nonconvex optimization is presented which never computes the objective-function value, but yet achieves the optimal $\mathcal{O}(\epsilon^{-3/2})$ complexity…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-22 Serge Gratton , Sadok Jerad , Philippe L. Toint

In this paper, we consider smooth convex optimization problems with simple constraints and inexactness in the oracle information such as value, partial or directional derivatives of the objective function. We introduce a unifying framework,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-12-17 Pavel Dvurechensky , Alexander Gasnikov , Alexander Tiurin , Vladimir Zholobov

This paper is devoted to the study of the solution of a stochastic convex black box optimization problem. Where the black box problem means that the gradient-free oracle only returns the value of objective function, not its gradient. We…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-04-18 Aleksandr Lobanov

We consider derivative-free algorithms for stochastic and non-stochastic convex optimization problems that use only function values rather than gradients. Focusing on non-asymptotic bounds on convergence rates, we show that if pairs of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-08-21 John C. Duchi , Michael I. Jordan , Martin J. Wainwright , Andre Wibisono

In statistics, it is common to encounter multi-modal and non-smooth likelihood (or objective function) maximization problems, where the parameters have known upper and lower bounds. This paper proposes a novel derivative-free global…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-09-14 Priyam Das

One of the most effective algorithms for differentially private learning and optimization is objective perturbation. This technique augments a given optimization problem (e.g. deriving from an ERM problem) with a random linear term, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-01 Seth Neel , Aaron Roth , Giuseppe Vietri , Zhiwei Steven Wu

We consider the minimization of submodular functions subject to ordering constraints. We show that this optimization problem can be cast as a convex optimization problem on a space of uni-dimensional measures, with ordering constraints…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-07-31 Francis Bach