Related papers: First-order methods almost always avoid saddle poi…
We present a comprehensive theoretical analysis of first-order methods for escaping strict saddle points in smooth non-convex optimization. Our main contribution is a Perturbed Saddle-escape Descent (PSD) algorithm with fully explicit…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) methods see many uses in optimization problems. Modifications to the algorithm, such as momentum-based SGD methods have been known to produce better results in certain cases. Much of this, however, is due…
We describe the first gradient methods on Riemannian manifolds to achieve accelerated rates in the non-convex case. Under Lipschitz assumptions on the Riemannian gradient and Hessian of the cost function, these methods find approximate…
Learning new tasks by drawing on prior experience gathered from other (related) tasks is a core property of any intelligent system. Gradient-based meta-learning, especially MAML and its variants, has emerged as a viable solution to…
We analyze the behavior of randomized coordinate gradient descent for nonconvex optimization, proving that under standard assumptions, the iterates almost surely escape strict saddle points. By formulating the method as a nonlinear random…
The paper studies a distributed gradient descent (DGD) process and considers the problem of showing that in nonconvex optimization problems, DGD typically converges to local minima rather than saddle points. The paper considers…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is widely used in machine learning research. Previous convergence analyses of SGD under the vanishing step-size setting typically require Robbins-Monro conditions. However, in practice, a wider variety of…
We present a general technique for the analysis of first-order methods. The technique relies on the construction of a duality gap for an appropriate approximation of the objective function, where the function approximation improves as the…
We consider the problem of finding local minimizers in non-convex and non-smooth optimization. Under the assumption of strict saddle points, positive results have been derived for first-order methods. We present the first known results for…
This paper introduces a coordinate descent version of the V\~u-Condat algorithm. By coordinate descent, we mean that only a subset of the coordinates of the primal and dual iterates is updated at each iteration, the other coordinates being…
We consider the problem of convergence to a saddle point of a concave-convex function via gradient dynamics. Since first introduced by Arrow, Hurwicz and Uzawa in [1] such dynamics have been extensively used in diverse areas, there are,…
We study generalized smoothness in nonconvex optimization, focusing on $(L_0, L_1)$-smoothness and anisotropic smoothness. The former was empirically derived from practical neural network training examples, while the latter arises naturally…
Stochastically controlled stochastic gradient (SCSG) methods have been proved to converge efficiently to first-order stationary points which, however, can be saddle points in nonconvex optimization. It has been observed that a stochastic…
Second-order optimization methods exhibit fast convergence to critical points, however, in nonconvex optimization, these methods often require restrictive step-sizes to ensure a monotonically decreasing objective function. In the presence…
Gradient descent is a popular algorithm in optimization, and its performance in convex settings is mostly well understood. In non-convex settings, it has been shown that gradient descent is able to escape saddle points asymptotically and…
A vast literature on convergence guarantees for gradient descent and derived methods exists at the moment. However, a simple practical situation remains unexplored: when a fixed step size is used, can we expect gradient descent to converge…
In this paper we investigate the convergence of a recently popular class of first-order primal-dual algorithms for saddle point problems under the presence of errors occurring in the proximal maps and gradients. We study several types of…
A central challenge to many fields of science and engineering involves minimizing non-convex error functions over continuous, high dimensional spaces. Gradient descent or quasi-Newton methods are almost ubiquitously used to perform such…
These notes focus on the minimization of convex functionals using first-order optimization methods, which are fundamental in many areas of applied mathematics and engineering. The primary goal of this document is to introduce and analyze…
This work considers the question: what convergence guarantees does the stochastic subgradient method have in the absence of smoothness and convexity? We prove that the stochastic subgradient method, on any semialgebraic locally Lipschitz…