Related papers: Minimizing a stochastic convex function subject to…
We revisit the sample average approximation (SAA) approach for non-convex stochastic programming. We show that applying the SAA approach to problems with expected value equality constraints does not necessarily result in asymptotic…
In this paper, we study a family of non-convex and possibly non-smooth inf-projection minimization problems, where the target objective function is equal to minimization of a joint function over another variable. This problem include…
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…
We consider minimization of stochastic functionals that are compositions of a (potentially) non-smooth convex function $h$ and smooth function $c$ and, more generally, stochastic weakly-convex functionals. We develop a family of stochastic…
This paper focuses on finding approximate solutions to stochastic optimal control problems with control domains being not necessarily convex, where the state trajectory is subject to controlled stochastic differential equations. The…
We analyze a simple randomized subgradient method for approximating solutions to stochastic systems of convex functional constraints, the only input to the algorithm being the size of minibatches. By introducing a new notion of what is…
Stochastic Approximation has been a prominent set of tools for solving problems with noise and uncertainty. Increasingly, it becomes important to solve optimization problems wherein there is noise in both a set of constraints that a…
Consider the problem of estimating the mean of a Gaussian random vector when the mean vector is assumed to be in a given convex set. The most natural solution is to take the Euclidean projection of the data vector on to this convex set; in…
Stochastic processes wherein the size of the state space is changing as a function of time offer models for the emergence of scale-invariant features observed in complex systems. I consider such a sample-space reducing (SSR) stochastic…
This paper considers the problem of minimizing an expectation function over a closed convex set, coupled with a {\color{black} functional or expectation} constraint on either decision variables or problem parameters. We first present a new…
We consider the problem of minimizing a convex function that is evolving according to unknown and possibly stochastic dynamics, which may depend jointly on time and on the decision variable itself. Such problems abound in the machine…
In this paper, we discuss the ambiguous chance constrained based portfolio optimization problems, in which the perturbations associated with the input parameters are stochastic in nature, but their distributions are not known precisely. We…
We study the performance of a family of randomized parallel coordinate descent methods for minimizing the sum of a nonsmooth and separable convex functions. The problem class includes as a special case L1-regularized L1 regression and the…
The problem of minimizing convex functionals of probability distributions is solved under the assumption that the density of every distribution is bounded from above and below. A system of sufficient and necessary first-order optimality…
Given a nonsmooth, nonconvex minimization problem, we consider algorithms that iteratively sample and minimize stochastic convex models of the objective function. Assuming that the one-sided approximation quality and the variation of the…
In this paper, we focus on the problem of stochastic optimization where the objective function can be written as an expectation function over a closed convex set. We also consider multiple expectation constraints which restrict the domain…
We introduce a class of stochastic algorithms for minimizing weakly convex functions over proximally smooth sets. As their main building blocks, the algorithms use simplified models of the objective function and the constraint set, along…
Stochastic optimization has found wide applications in minimizing objective functions in machine learning, which motivates a lot of theoretical studies to understand its practical success. Most of existing studies focus on the convergence…
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 paper we address the convergence of stochastic approximation when the functions to be minimized are not convex and nonsmooth. We show that the "mean-limit" approach to the convergence which leads, for smooth problems, to the ODE…