Related papers: Convergence of a first-order consensus-based globa…
Decentralized optimization to minimize a finite sum of functions over a network of nodes has been a significant focus within control and signal processing research due to its natural relevance to optimal control and signal estimation…
Bayesian optimization (BO) based on Gaussian process models is a powerful paradigm to optimize black-box functions that are expensive to evaluate. While several BO algorithms provably converge to the global optimum of the unknown function,…
Optimizing large-scale nonconvex problems, common in deep learning, demands balancing rapid convergence with computational efficiency. First-order (FO) optimizers, which serve as today's baselines, provide fast convergence and good…
Contextual Bayesian optimization (CBO) is a powerful framework for sequential decision-making given side information, with important applications, e.g., in wind energy systems. In this setting, the learner receives context (e.g., weather…
A parametric class of trust-region algorithms for unconstrained nonconvex optimization is considered where the value of the objective function is never computed. The class contains a deterministic version of the first-order Adagrad method…
Many practitioners who use the EM algorithm complain that it is sometimes slow. When does this happen, and what can be done about it? In this paper, we study the general class of bound optimization algorithms - including…
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…
Majorization-minimization algorithms consist of successively minimizing a sequence of upper bounds of the objective function so that along the iterations the objective function decreases. Such a simple principle allows to solve a large…
We introduce a class of first-order methods for smooth constrained optimization that are based on an analogy to non-smooth dynamical systems. Two distinctive features of our approach are that (i) projections or optimizations over the entire…
We investigate the implementation of a new stochastic Kuramoto-Vicsek-type model for global optimization of nonconvex functions on the sphere. This model belongs to the class of Consensus-Based Optimization. In fact, particles move on the…
Bayesian Optimization (BO) is a surrogate-assisted global optimization technique that has been successfully applied in various fields, e.g., automated machine learning and design optimization. Built upon a so-called infill-criterion and…
Constrained Online Convex Optimization (COCO) can be seen as a generalization of the standard Online Convex Optimization (OCO) framework. At each round, a cost function and constraint function are revealed after a learner chooses an action.…
Bayesian optimization (BO) is a class of global optimization algorithms, suitable for minimizing an expensive objective function in as few function evaluations as possible. While BO budgets are typically given in iterations, this implicitly…
This paper studies the problem of globally optimizing a variable of interest that is part of a causal model in which a sequence of interventions can be performed. This problem arises in biology, operational research, communications and,…
We propose potential-based analyses for first-order algorithms applied to constrained and composite minimization problems. We first propose ``idealized'' frameworks for algorithms in the strongly and non-strongly convex cases and argue…
In this paper, by using tools of second-order variational analysis, we study the popular forward-backward splitting method with Beck-Teboulle's line-search for solving convex optimization problem where the objective function can be split…
Bayesian optimization (BO) is an efficient framework for optimization of black-box objectives when function evaluations are costly and gradient information is not easily accessible. BO has been successfully applied to automate the task of…
This paper gives a unified and succinct approach to the $O(1/\sqrt{k}), O(1/k),$ and $O(1/k^2)$ convergence rates of the subgradient, gradient, and accelerated gradient methods for unconstrained convex minimization. In the three cases 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…
This paper investigates the stochastic distributed nonconvex optimization problem of minimizing a global cost function formed by the summation of $n$ local cost functions. We solve such a problem by involving zeroth-order (ZO) information…