Related papers: The Search direction Correction makes first-order …
We present two first-order, sequential optimization algorithms to solve constrained optimization problems. We consider a black-box setting with a priori unknown, non-convex objective and constraint functions that have Lipschitz continuous…
First-order optimization methods, such as SGD and Adam, are widely used for training large-scale deep neural networks due to their computational efficiency and robust performance. However, relying solely on gradient information, these…
In this paper, we study zeroth-order algorithms for minimax optimization problems that are nonconvex in one variable and strongly-concave in the other variable. Such minimax optimization problems have attracted significant attention lately…
Recent advances in convex optimization have leveraged computer-assisted proofs to develop optimized first-order methods that improve over classical algorithms. However, each optimized method is specially tailored for a particular problem…
Motivated by programmatic advertising optimization, we consider the task of sequentially allocating budget across a set of resources. At every time step, a feasible allocation is chosen and only a corresponding random return is observed.…
We develop and analyze several different second-order algorithms for computing a near-optimal solution path of a convex parametric optimization problem with smooth Hessian. Our algorithms are inspired by a differential equation perspective…
This paper presents the Safe Sequential Quadratically Constrained Quadratic Programming (SS-QCQP) algorithm, a first-order method for smooth inequality-constrained nonconvex optimization that guarantees feasibility at every iteration. The…
This paper is devoted to the design of efficient primal-dual algorithm (PDA) for solving convex optimization problems with known saddle-point structure. We present a new PDA with larger acceptable range of parameters and correction, which…
We propose a new stochastic optimization framework for empirical risk minimization problems such as those that arise in machine learning. The traditional approaches, such as (mini-batch) stochastic gradient descent (SGD), utilize an…
We propose a new method based on sparse optimal discriminant clustering (SODC), incorporating a penalty term into the scoring matrix based on convex clustering. With the addition of this penalty term, it is expected to improve the accuracy…
We consider the fundamental problem in non-convex optimization of efficiently reaching a stationary point. In contrast to the convex case, in the long history of this basic problem, the only known theoretical results on first-order…
A central challenge to using first-order methods for optimizing nonconvex problems is the presence of saddle points. First-order methods often get stuck at saddle points, greatly deteriorating their performance. Typically, to escape from…
We analyze stochastic gradient algorithms for optimizing nonconvex problems. In particular, our goal is to find local minima (second-order stationary points) instead of just finding first-order stationary points which may be some bad…
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…
We study the training dynamics of gradient descent in a softmax self-attention layer trained to perform linear regression and show that a simple first-order optimization algorithm can converge to the globally optimal self-attention…
First-order stochastic methods are the state-of-the-art in large-scale machine learning optimization owing to efficient per-iteration complexity. Second-order methods, while able to provide faster convergence, have been much less explored…
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…
Saddle-point problems have recently gained increased attention from the machine learning community, mainly due to applications in training Generative Adversarial Networks using stochastic gradients. At the same time, in some applications…
We consider the application of the type-I Anderson acceleration to solving general non-smooth fixed-point problems. By interleaving with safe-guarding steps, and employing a Powell-type regularization and a re-start checking for strong…
This paper studies second-order methods for convex-concave minimax optimization. Monteiro and Svaiter (2012) proposed a method to solve the problem with an optimal iteration complexity of $\mathcal{O}(\epsilon^{-3/2})$ to find an…