Related papers: Efficient Implementation of Second-Order Stochasti…

This paper concerns a high-dimensional stochastic programming problem of minimizing a function of expected cost with a matrix argument. To this problem, one of the most widely applied solution paradigms is the sample average approximation…

Many machine learning and optimization algorithms can be cast as instances of stochastic approximation (SA). The convergence rate of these algorithms is known to be slow, with the optimal mean squared error (MSE) of order $O(n^{-1})$. In…

We study constrained nested stochastic optimization problems in which the objective function is a composition of two smooth functions whose exact values and derivatives are not available. We propose a single time-scale stochastic…

ADAGB2, a generalization of the Adagrad algorithm for stochastic optimization is introduced, which is also applicable to bound-constrained problems and capable of using second-order information when available. It is shown that, given…

Second-order Newton-type algorithms that leverage the exact Hessian or its approximation are central to solve nonlinear optimization problems. However, their applications in solving large-scale nonconvex problems are hindered by three…

Pruning neural networks reduces inference time and memory costs. On standard hardware, these benefits will be especially prominent if coarse-grained structures, like feature maps, are pruned. We devise two novel saliency-based methods for…

We design an algorithm which finds an $\epsilon$-approximate stationary point (with $\|\nabla F(x)\|\le \epsilon$) using $O(\epsilon^{-3})$ stochastic gradient and Hessian-vector products, matching guarantees that were previously available…

The stable principal component pursuit (SPCP) problem is a non-smooth convex optimization problem, the solution of which has been shown both in theory and in practice to enable one to recover the low rank and sparse components of a matrix…

Stochastic approximation (SA) is an iterative algorithm for finding the fixed point of an operator using noisy samples and widely used in optimization and Reinforcement Learning (RL). The noise in RL exhibits a Markovian structure, and in…

In this work, we consider convex optimization problems with smooth objective function and nonsmooth functional constraints. We propose a new stochastic gradient algorithm, called Stochastic Halfspace Approximation Method (SHAM), to solve…

Zeroth-order optimization addresses problems where gradient information is inaccessible or impractical to compute. While most existing methods rely on first-order approximations, incorporating second-order (curvature) information can, in…

In this work, we develop analysis and algorithms for a class of (stochastic) bilevel optimization problems whose lower-level (LL) problem is strongly convex and linearly constrained. Most existing approaches for solving such problems rely…

The goal of policy-based reinforcement learning (RL) is to search the maximal point of its objective. However, due to the inherent non-concavity of its objective, convergence to a first-order stationary point (FOSP) can not guarantee the…

We consider a two-stage stochastic optimization problem, in which a long-term optimization variable is coupled with a set of short-term optimization variables in both objective and constraint functions. Despite that two-stage stochastic…

We consider stochastic optimization of a smooth non-convex loss function with a convex non-smooth regularizer. In the online setting, where a single sample of the stochastic gradient of the loss is available at every iteration, the problem…

This work proposes a universal and adaptive second-order method for minimizing second-order smooth, convex functions. Our algorithm achieves $O(\sigma / \sqrt{T})$ convergence when the oracle feedback is stochastic with variance $\sigma^2$,…

We consider a smoothed online convex optimization (SOCO) problem with predictions, where the learner has access to a finite lookahead window of time-varying stage costs, but suffers a switching cost for changing its actions at each stage.…

A stochastic iterative algorithm approximating second-order information using von Neumann series is discussed. We present convergence guarantees for strongly-convex and smooth functions. Our analysis is much simpler in contrast to a similar…

A number of problems in relational Artificial Intelligence can be viewed as Stochastic Constraint Optimization Problems (SCOPs). These are constraint optimization problems that involve objectives or constraints with a stochastic component.…

Deep representation learning has become one of the most widely adopted approaches for visual search, recommendation, and identification. Retrieval of such representations from a large database is however computationally challenging.…