Related papers: Near-Optimal Methods for Minimizing Star-Convex Fu…
Acceleration for non-convex functions is a fundamental challenge in optimisation. We revisit star-convex functions, which are strictly unimodal on all lines through a minimizer. [1] accelerate unconstrained star-convex minimization of…
This paper optimizes the step coefficients of first-order methods for smooth convex minimization in terms of the worst-case convergence bound (i.e., efficiency) of the decrease in the gradient norm. This work is based on the performance…
We introduce and study a new class of generalized convex functions termed star quasiconvex functions. This class includes convex, star-convex, quasiconvex, quasar-convex, and positively homogeneous functions of any degree $p>0$ as special…
Quasar-convex functions form a broad nonconvex class with applications to linear dynamical systems, generalized linear models, and Riemannian optimization, among others. Current nearly optimal algorithms work only in affine spaces due to…
Quasar convexity is a condition that allows some first-order methods to efficiently minimize a function even when the optimization landscape is non-convex. Previous works develop near-optimal accelerated algorithms for minimizing this class…
This paper generalizes the optimized gradient method (OGM) that achieves the optimal worst-case cost function bound of first-order methods for smooth convex minimization. Specifically, this paper studies a generalized formulation of OGM and…
This paper considers the problem of unconstrained minimization of smooth convex functions having Lipschitz continuous gradients with known Lipschitz constant. We recently proposed an optimized gradient method (OGM) for this problem and…
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…
This paper tackles the unconstrained minimization of a class of nonsmooth and nonconvex functions that can be written as finite max-functions. A gradient and function-based sampling method is proposed which, under special circumstances,…
Machine learning algorithms typically perform optimization over a class of non-convex functions. In this work, we provide bounds on the fundamental hardness of identifying the global minimizer of a non convex function. Specifically, we…
This paper considers optimization of smooth nonconvex functionals in smooth infinite dimensional spaces. A H\"older gradient descent algorithm is first proposed for finding approximate first-order points of regularized polynomial…
We describe a novel constructive technique for devising efficient first-order methods for a wide range of large-scale convex minimization settings, including smooth, non-smooth, and strongly convex minimization. The technique builds upon a…
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…
An adaptive regularization algorithm using inexact function and derivatives evaluations is proposed for the solution of composite nonsmooth nonconvex optimization. It is shown that this algorithm needs at most…
This work considers minimizing a sum of convex functions, each with potentially different structure ranging from nonsmooth to smooth, Lipschitz to non-Lipschitz. Nesterov's universal fast gradient method provides an optimal black-box…
This paper proposes a stochastic gradient descent method with an adaptive Gaussian noise term for the global minimization of nearly convex functions, which are nonconvex and possess multiple strict local minimizers. The noise term,…
We develop a new proximal-gradient method for minimizing the sum of a differentiable, possibly nonconvex, function plus a convex, possibly non differentiable, function. The key features of the proposed method are the definition of a…
Frequently, when dealing with many machine learning models, optimization problems appear to be challenging due to a limited understanding of the constructions and characterizations of the objective functions in these problems. Therefore,…
We propose an adaptive proximal gradient method for minimizing the sum of two functions, where one is a simple convex function, and the other belongs to one of the three classes: nonconvex smooth, convex nonsmooth, or convex smooth. The key…
Classical results show that gradient descent converges linearly to minimizers of smooth strongly convex functions. A natural question is whether there exists a locally nearly linearly convergent method for nonsmooth functions with quadratic…