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This paper deals with composite optimization problems having the objective function formed as the sum of two terms, one has Lipschitz continuous gradient along random subspaces and may be nonconvex and the second term is simple and…
We propose a new gradient descent algorithm with added stochastic terms for finding the global optimizers of nonconvex optimization problems. A key component in the algorithm is the adaptive tuning of the randomness based on the value of…
In this paper, we propose a new, simplified high probability analysis of AdaGrad for smooth, non-convex problems. More specifically, we focus on a particular accelerated gradient (AGD) template (Lan, 2020), through which we recover the…
We construct a zeroth-order gradient estimator for a smooth function defined on the probability simplex. The proposed estimator queries the simplex only. We prove that projected gradient descent and the exponential weights algorithm, when…
Large-scale optimization problems require algorithms both effective and efficient. One such popular and proven algorithm is Stochastic Gradient Descent which uses first-order gradient information to solve these problems. This paper studies…
We present new algorithms for optimizing non-smooth, non-convex stochastic objectives based on a novel analysis technique. This improves the current best-known complexity for finding a $(\delta,\epsilon)$-stationary point from…
We propose a stochastic optimization method for the minimization of the sum of three convex functions, one of which has Lipschitz continuous gradient as well as restricted strong convexity. Our approach is most suitable in the setting where…
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 $\mathcal{O}(1/{\varepsilon})$,…
We provide a simple proof of convergence covering both the Adam and Adagrad adaptive optimization algorithms when applied to smooth (possibly non-convex) objective functions with bounded gradients. We show that in expectation, the squared…
Here we study non-convex composite optimization: first, a finite-sum of smooth but non-convex functions, and second, a general function that admits a simple proximal mapping. Most research on stochastic methods for composite optimization…
We study the foundations of variational inference, which frames posterior inference as an optimisation problem, for probabilistic programming. The dominant approach for optimisation in practice is stochastic gradient descent. In particular,…
We analyze stochastic gradient algorithms for optimizing nonconvex, nonsmooth finite-sum problems. In particular, the objective function is given by the summation of a differentiable (possibly nonconvex) component, together with a possibly…
In this paper, we propose a proximal gradient method and an accelerated proximal gradient method for solving composite optimization problems, where the objective function is the sum of a smooth and a convex, possibly nonsmooth, function. We…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is one of the most widely used optimization methods for parallel and distributed processing of large datasets. One of the key limitations of distributed SGD is the need to regularly communicate the…
We develop a class of algorithms, as variants of the stochastically controlled stochastic gradient (SCSG) methods (Lei and Jordan, 2016), for the smooth non-convex finite-sum optimization problem. Assuming the smoothness of each component,…
In this paper, we propose a unified view of gradient-based algorithms for stochastic convex composite optimization by extending the concept of estimate sequence introduced by Nesterov. More precisely, we interpret a large class of…
In this paper, we design and analyze a new family of adaptive subgradient methods for solving an important class of weakly convex (possibly nonsmooth) stochastic optimization problems. Adaptive methods that use exponential moving averages…
Large-scale nonconvex optimization problems are ubiquitous in modern machine learning, and among practitioners interested in solving them, Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) reigns supreme. We revisit the analysis of SGD in the nonconvex…
The graduated optimization approach, also known as the continuation method, is a popular heuristic to solving non-convex problems that has received renewed interest over the last decade. Despite its popularity, very little is known in terms…
This paper reviews the gradient sampling methodology for solving nonsmooth, nonconvex optimization problems. An intuitively straightforward gradient sampling algorithm is stated and its convergence properties are summarized. Throughout this…