Related papers: Zeroth-order Stochastic Compositional Algorithms f…
We derive several numerical methods for designing optimized first-order algorithms in unconstrained convex optimization settings. Our methods are based on the Performance Estimation Problem (PEP) framework, which casts the worst-case…
We consider a distributionally robust stochastic optimization problem and formulate it as a stochastic two-level composition optimization problem with the use of the mean--semideviation risk measure. In this setting, we consider a single…
In this paper we propose stochastic gradient-free methods and accelerated methods with momentum for solving stochastic optimization problems. All these methods rely on stochastic directions rather than stochastic gradients. We analyze the…
We consider the problem of global optimization of an unknown non-convex smooth function with zeroth-order feedback. In this setup, an algorithm is allowed to adaptively query the underlying function at different locations and receives noisy…
Minimizing finite sums of functions is a central problem in optimization, arising in numerous practical applications. Such problems are commonly addressed using first-order optimization methods. However, these procedures cannot be used in…
We consider the problem of Cost-Aware Learning, where sampling different component functions of a finite-sum objective incurs different costs. The objective is to reach a target error while minimizing the total cost. First, we propose the…
Composite convex optimization problems which include both a nonsmooth term and a low-rank promoting term have important applications in machine learning and signal processing, such as when one wishes to recover an unknown matrix that is…
Round complexity is an extensively studied metric of distributed algorithms. In contrast, our knowledge of the \emph{message complexity} of distributed computing problems and its relationship (if any) with round complexity is still quite…
In this paper, we propose and analyze algorithms for zeroth-order optimization of non-convex composite objectives, focusing on reducing the complexity dependence on dimensionality. This is achieved by exploiting the low dimensional…
This paper considers convex games involving multiple agents that aim to minimize their own cost functions using locally available information. A common assumption in the study of such games is that the agents are symmetric, meaning that…
Stochastic multi-level compositional optimization problems cover many new machine learning paradigms, e.g., multi-step model-agnostic meta-learning, which require efficient optimization algorithms for large-scale data. This paper studies…
We provide the first generalization error analysis for black-box learning through derivative-free optimization. Under the assumption of a Lipschitz and smooth unknown loss, we consider the Zeroth-order Stochastic Search (ZoSS) algorithm,…
We implement a fully factorization-free algorithm for nonconvex, free-final-time trajectory optimization. This algorithm is based on sequential convex programming and utilizes an inverse-free, exact discretization procedure to ensure…
The zeroth-order optimization has been widely used in machine learning applications. However, the theoretical study of the zeroth-order optimization focus on the algorithms which approximate (first-order) gradients using (zeroth-order)…
In this paper we consider stochastic composite convex optimization problems with the objective function satisfying a stochastic bounded gradient condition, with or without a quadratic functional growth property. These models include the…
In this paper, we study zeroth-order algorithms for nonconvex minimax problems with coupled linear constraints under the deterministic and stochastic settings, which have attracted wide attention in machine learning, signal processing and…
Existing decentralized algorithms usually require knowledge of problem parameters for updating local iterates. For example, the hyperparameters (such as learning rate) usually require the knowledge of Lipschitz constant of the global…
An algorithm is proposed for solving optimization problems with stochastic objective and deterministic equality and inequality constraints. This algorithm is objective-function-free in the sense that it only uses the objective's gradient…
This paper investigates projection-free algorithms for stochastic constrained multi-level optimization. In this context, the objective function is a nested composition of several smooth functions, and the decision set is closed and convex.…
We design and analyze an algorithm for first-order stochastic optimization of a large class of functions on $\mathbb{R}^d$. In particular, we consider the \emph{variationally coherent} functions which can be convex or non-convex. The…