Related papers: Gradient flows and proximal splitting methods: A u…
We consider solving a convex, possibly stochastic optimization problem over a randomly time-varying multi-agent network. Each agent has access to some local objective function, and it only has unbiased estimates of the gradients of the…
We develop model-based methods for solving stochastic convex optimization problems, introducing the approximate-proximal point, or aProx, family, which includes stochastic subgradient, proximal point, and bundle methods. When the modeling…
In the past few years, following the differentiable programming paradigm, there has been a growing interest in computing the gradient information of physical processes (e.g., physical simulation, image rendering). However, such processes…
In this work, we propose some new Douglas-Rashford splitting algorithms for solving a class of generalized DC (difference of convex functions) in real Hilbert spaces. The proposed methods leverage the proximal properties of the nonsmooth…
In this work, we consider methods for solving large-scale optimization problems with a possibly nonsmooth objective function. The key idea is to first specify a class of optimization algorithms using a generic iterative scheme involving…
Sparse learning is a very important tool for mining useful information and patterns from high dimensional data. Non-convex non-smooth regularized learning problems play essential roles in sparse learning, and have drawn extensive attentions…
In this paper we consider distributed optimization problems in which the cost function is separable (i.e., a sum of possibly non-smooth functions all sharing a common variable) and can be split into a strongly convex term and a convex one.…
In this paper we develop proximal methods for statistical learning. Proximal point algorithms are useful in statistics and machine learning for obtaining optimization solutions for composite functions. Our approach exploits closed-form…
The accelerated method in solving optimization problems has always been an absorbing topic. Based on the fixed-time (FxT) stability of nonlinear dynamical systems, we provide a unified approach for designing FxT gradient flows (FxTGFs).…
We consider the proximal-gradient method for minimizing an objective function that is the sum of a smooth function and a non-smooth convex function. A feature that distinguishes our work from most in the literature is that we assume that…
The modified Method of Successive Approximations (MSA) is an iterative scheme for approximating solutions to stochastic control problems in continuous time based on Pontryagin Optimality Principle which, starting with an initial open loop…
Stochastic gradient descent (\textsc{Sgd}) methods are the most powerful optimization tools in training machine learning and deep learning models. Moreover, acceleration (a.k.a. momentum) methods and diagonal scaling (a.k.a. adaptive…
This paper addresses the gradient flow -- the continuous-time representation of the gradient method -- with the smooth approximation of a non-differentiable objective function and presents convergence analysis framework. Similar to the…
Majorization-minimization algorithms consist of iteratively minimizing a majorizing surrogate of an objective function. Because of its simplicity and its wide applicability, this principle has been very popular in statistics and in signal…
We consider the problem of optimizing the sum of a smooth convex function and a non-smooth convex function using proximal-gradient methods, where an error is present in the calculation of the gradient of the smooth term or in the proximity…
In the context of finite sums minimization, variance reduction techniques are widely used to improve the performance of state-of-the-art stochastic gradient methods. Their practical impact is clear, as well as their theoretical properties.…
We prove novel convergence results for a stochastic proximal gradient algorithm suitable for solving a large class of convex optimization problems, where a convex objective function is given by the sum of a smooth and a possibly non-smooth…
Gaussian processes are a powerful framework for quantifying uncertainty and for sequential decision-making but are limited by the requirement of solving linear systems. In general, this has a cubic cost in dataset size and is sensitive to…
We propose new continuous-time formulations for first-order stochastic optimization algorithms such as mini-batch gradient descent and variance-reduced methods. We exploit these continuous-time models, together with simple Lyapunov analysis…
This paper deals with the geometric numerical integration of gradient flow and its application to optimization. Gradient flows often appear as model equations of various physical phenomena, and their dissipation laws are essential.…