Related papers: Tensor Methods for Finding Approximate Stationary …
Escaping saddle points is a central research topic in nonconvex optimization. In this paper, we propose a simple gradient-based algorithm such that for a smooth function $f\colon\mathbb{R}^n\to\mathbb{R}$, it outputs an…
We study the iteration complexity of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for minimizing the gradient norm of smooth, possibly nonconvex functions. We provide several results, implying that the $\mathcal{O}(\epsilon^{-4})$ upper bound of…
We analyze stochastic algorithms for optimizing nonconvex, nonsmooth finite-sum problems, where the nonconvex part is smooth and the nonsmooth part is convex. Surprisingly, unlike the smooth case, our knowledge of this fundamental problem…
Anderson acceleration (or Anderson mixing) is an efficient acceleration method for fixed point iterations $x_{t+1}=G(x_t)$, e.g., gradient descent can be viewed as iteratively applying the operation $G(x) \triangleq x-\alpha\nabla f(x)$. It…
We consider the case of derivative-free algorithms for non-convex optimization, also known as zero order algorithms, that use only function evaluations rather than gradients. For a wide variety of gradient approximators based on finite…
In this paper, we study a class of deterministically constrained stochastic optimization problems. Existing methods typically aim to find an $\epsilon$-stochastic stationary point, where the expected violations of both constraints and…
In this paper, we introduce faster accelerated primal-dual algorithms for minimizing a convex function subject to strongly convex function constraints. Prior to our work, the best complexity bound was $\mathcal{O}(1/{\varepsilon})$,…
In this paper we consider finding an approximate second-order stationary point (SOSP) of nonconvex conic optimization that minimizes a twice differentiable function over the intersection of an affine subspace and a convex cone. In…
The optimization step in many machine learning problems rarely relies on vanilla gradient descent but it is common practice to use momentum-based accelerated methods. Despite these algorithms being widely applied to arbitrary loss…
While first-order stationary points (FOSPs) are the traditional targets of non-convex optimization, they often correspond to undesirable strict saddle points. To circumvent this, attention has shifted towards second-order stationary points…
Recent advances (Sherman, 2017; Sidford and Tian, 2018; Cohen et al., 2021) have overcome the fundamental barrier of dimension dependence in the iteration complexity of solving $\ell_\infty$ regression with first-order methods. Yet it…
We design fast deterministic algorithms for distance computation in the congested clique model. Our key contributions include: -- A $(2+\epsilon)$-approximation for all-pairs shortest paths in $O(\log^2{n} / \epsilon)$ rounds on unweighted…
High-order tensor methods that employ Taylor-based local models (of degree $p\ge 3$) within adaptive regularization frameworks have been recently proposed for both convex and nonconvex optimization problems. They have been shown to have…
Adaptive gradient methods have attracted much attention of machine learning communities due to the high efficiency. However their acceleration effect in practice, especially in neural network training, is hard to analyze, theoretically. The…
We provide a simple and flexible framework for designing differentially private algorithms to find approximate stationary points of non-convex loss functions. Our framework is based on using a private approximate risk minimizer to "warm…
Coordinate descent methods have considerable impact in global optimization because global (or, at least, almost global) minimization is affordable for low-dimensional problems. Coordinate descent methods with high-order regularized models…
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 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…
In this paper we consider a nonconvex unconstrained optimization problem minimizing a twice differentiable objective function with H\"older continuous Hessian. Specifically, we first propose a Newton-conjugate gradient (Newton-CG) method…
This paper presents an algorithmic framework for solving unconstrained stochastic optimization problems using only stochastic function evaluations. We employ central finite-difference based gradient estimation methods to approximate the…