Related papers: Convergence of a Stochastic Subgradient Method wit…
In this paper, we study the performance of a large family of SGD variants in the smooth nonconvex regime. To this end, we propose a generic and flexible assumption capable of accurate modeling of the second moment of the stochastic…
In this work, we consider convex optimization problems with smooth objective function and nonsmooth functional constraints. We propose a new stochastic gradient algorithm, called Stochastic Halfspace Approximation Method (SHAM), to solve…
This paper considers non-smooth optimization problems where we seek to minimize the pointwise maximum of a continuously parameterized family of functions. Since the objective function is given as the solution to a maximization problem,…
For strongly convex objectives that are smooth, the classical theory of gradient descent ensures linear convergence relative to the number of gradient evaluations. An analogous nonsmooth theory is challenging. Even when the objective is…
A generalized conditional gradient method for minimizing the sum of two convex functions, one of them differentiable, is presented. This iterative method relies on two main ingredients: First, the minimization of a partially linearized…
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…
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…
Subgradient methods are the natural extension to the non-smooth case of the classical gradient descent for regular convex optimization problems. However, in general, they are characterized by slow convergence rates, and they require…
We study nonconvex finite-sum problems and analyze stochastic variance reduced gradient (SVRG) methods for them. SVRG and related methods have recently surged into prominence for convex optimization given their edge over stochastic gradient…
This paper considers a general convex constrained problem setting where functions are not assumed to be differentiable nor Lipschitz continuous. Our motivation is in finding a simple first-order method for solving a wide range of convex…
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…
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…
In this paper, we suggest a new framework for analyzing primal subgradient methods for nonsmooth convex optimization problems. We show that the classical step-size rules, based on normalization of subgradient, or on the knowledge of optimal…
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…
We present two stochastic descent algorithms that apply to unconstrained optimization and are particularly efficient when the objective function is slow to evaluate and gradients are not easily obtained, as in some PDE-constrained…
In this paper, we consider the minimization of a nonsmooth nonconvex objective function $f(x)$ over a closed convex subset $\mathcal{X}$ of $\mathbb{R}^n$, with additional nonsmooth nonconvex constraints $c(x) = 0$. We develop a unified…
A stochastic incremental subgradient algorithm for the minimization of a sum of convex functions is introduced. The method sequentially uses partial subgradient information and the sequence of partial subgradients is determined by a general…
In this paper we study the convex problem of optimizing the sum of a smooth function and a compactly supported non-smooth term with a specific separable form. We analyze the block version of the generalized conditional gradient method when…
In nonsmooth optimization, a negative subgradient is not necessarily a descent direction, making the design of convergent descent methods based on zeroth-order and first-order information a challenging task. The well-studied bundle methods…
We propose a novel stochastic smoothing accelerated gradient (SSAG) method for general constrained nonsmooth convex composite optimization, and analyze the convergence rates. The SSAG method allows various smoothing techniques, and can deal…