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We study the continuous-time structure of the difference-of-convex algorithm (DCA) for smooth DC decompositions with a strongly convex component. In dual coordinates, classical DCA is exactly the full-step explicit Euler discretization of a…
In this paper, we consider a class of single-ratio fractional minimization problems, where both the numerator and denominator of the objective are convex functions satisfying positive homogeneity. Many nonsmooth optimization problems on the…
Stochastic optimization finds a wide range of applications in operations research and management science. However, existing stochastic optimization techniques usually require the information of random samples (e.g., demands in the…
Sparse optimization refers to an optimization problem involving the zero-norm in objective or constraints. In this paper, nonconvex approximation approaches for sparse optimization have been studied with a unifying point of view in DC…
When solving decision-making problems with mathematical optimization, some constraints or objectives may lack analytic expressions but can be approximated from data. When an approximation is made by neural networks, the underlying problem…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) has become popular for solving large scale supervised machine learning optimization problems such as SVM, due to their strong theoretical guarantees. While the closely related Dual Coordinate Ascent (DCA)…
We focus on decentralized stochastic non-convex optimization, where $n$ agents work together to optimize a composite objective function which is a sum of a smooth term and a non-smooth convex term. To solve this problem, we propose two…
Difference-of-Convex (DC) minimization, referring to the problem of minimizing the difference of two convex functions, has been found rich applications in statistical learning and studied extensively for decades. However, existing methods…
We study decentralized asynchronous multiagent optimization over networks, modeled as static (possibly directed) graphs. The optimization problem consists of minimizing a (possibly nonconvex) smooth function--the sum of the agents' local…
Gradient-based optimization methods for hyperparameter tuning guarantee theoretical convergence to stationary solutions when for fixed upper-level variable values, the lower level of the bilevel program is strongly convex (LLSC) and smooth…
We propose an algorithm for optimizing the parameters of single hidden layer neural networks. Specifically, we derive a blockwise difference-of-convex (DC) functions representation of the objective function. Based on the latter, we propose…
We introduce an extension of the Difference of Convex Algorithm (DCA) in the form of a randomized block coordinate approach for problems with separable structure. For $n$ coordinate-blocks and $k$ iterations, our main result proves a…
Gradient Descent Ascent (GDA) methods for min-max optimization problems typically produce oscillatory behavior that can lead to instability, e.g., in bilinear settings. To address this problem, we introduce a dissipation term into the GDA…
In this paper, we consider a composite difference-of-convex (DC) program, whose objective function is the sum of a smooth convex function with Lipschitz continuous gradient, a proper closed and convex function, and a continuous concave…
The block coordinate descent (BCD) method is widely used for minimizing a continuous function f of several block variables. At each iteration of this method, a single block of variables is optimized, while the remaining variables are held…
This paper proposes a constrained stochastic successive convex approximation (CSSCA) algorithm to find a stationary point for a general non-convex stochastic optimization problem, whose objective and constraint functions are non-convex and…
This article explores distributed convex optimization with globally-coupled constraints, where the objective function is a general nonsmooth convex function, the constraints include nonlinear inequalities and affine equalities, and the…
In this paper, we consider multi-stage stochastic optimization problems with convex objectives and conic constraints at each stage. We present a new stochastic first-order method, namely the dynamic stochastic approximation (DSA) algorithm,…
We address the problem of multiple local optima arising due to non-convex objective functions in cooperative multi-agent optimization problems. To escape such local optima, we propose a systematic approach based on the concept of boosting…
In this work, we first consider distributed convex constrained optimization problems where the objective function is encoded by multiple local and possibly nonsmooth objectives privately held by a group of agents, and propose a distributed…