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The stochastic Polyak step size (SPS) has proven to be a promising choice for stochastic gradient descent (SGD), delivering competitive performance relative to state-of-the-art methods on smooth convex and non-convex optimization problems,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-22 Dimitris Oikonomou , Nicolas Loizou

This paper studies a stochastic algorithm for linearly constrained nonconvex optimization, where the objective function is smooth but only unbiased stochastic gradients with bounded variance are available. We propose a momentum-based…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-16 Chenyang Qiu , Mihitha Maithripala , Zongli Lin

In large-scale learning algorithms, the momentum term is usually included in the stochastic sub-gradient method to improve the learning speed because it can navigate ravines efficiently to reach a local minimum. However, step-size and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-07 Wen-Liang Hwang

It is known that when minimizing smooth Polyak-{\L}ojasiewicz (PL) functions, momentum algorithms cannot significantly improve the convergence bound of gradient descent, contrasting with the acceleration phenomenon occurring in the strongly…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-11 Julien Hermant

In machine learning applications, it is well known that carefully designed learning rate (step size) schedules can significantly improve the convergence of commonly used first-order optimization algorithms. Therefore how to set step size…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-10-19 Xiaoyu Wang , Mikael Johansson , Tong Zhang

Policy gradients methods apply to complex, poorly understood, control problems by performing stochastic gradient descent over a parameterized class of polices. Unfortunately, even for simple control problems solvable by standard dynamic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-22 Jalaj Bhandari , Daniel Russo

The Polyak stepsize has been proven to be a fundamental stepsize in convex optimization, giving near optimal gradient descent rates across a wide range of assumptions. The universality of the Polyak stepsize has also inspired many…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-22 Francesco Orabona , Ryan D'Orazio

We present an optimal gradient method for smooth strongly convex optimization. The method is optimal in the sense that its worst-case bound on the distance to an optimal point exactly matches the lower bound on the oracle complexity for the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-06-15 Adrien Taylor , Yoel Drori

We study the iteration complexity of Lipschitz convex optimization problems satisfying a general error bound. We show that for this class of problems, subgradient descent with either Polyak stepsizes or decaying stepsizes achieves minimax…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-17 Alex L. Wang

In this paper we introduce two novel generalizations of the theory for gradient descent type methods in the proximal setting. First, we introduce the proportion function, which we further use to analyze all known (and many new)…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-09-12 Dominik Csiba , Peter Richtárik

The paper presents a review of the state-of-the-art of subgradient and accelerated methods of convex optimization, including in the presence of disturbances and access to various information about the objective function (function value,…

We propose a stochastic variant of the classical Polyak step-size (Polyak, 1987) commonly used in the subgradient method. Although computing the Polyak step-size requires knowledge of the optimal function values, this information is readily…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-03-23 Nicolas Loizou , Sharan Vaswani , Issam Laradji , Simon Lacoste-Julien

This work establishes new convergence guarantees for gradient descent in smooth convex optimization via a computer-assisted analysis technique. Our theory allows nonconstant stepsize policies with frequent long steps potentially violating…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-06 Benjamin Grimmer

Stochastic gradient descent with momentum, also known as Stochastic Heavy Ball method (SHB), is one of the most popular algorithms for solving large-scale stochastic optimization problems in various machine learning tasks. In practical…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-03-05 Dimitris Oikonomou , Nicolas Loizou

We suggest simple implementable modifications of conditional gradient and gradient projection methods for smooth convex optimization problems in Hilbert spaces. Usually, the custom methods attain only weak convergence. We prove strong…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-05-04 Igor Konnov

In this paper, we derive a new linear convergence rate for the gradient method with fixed step lengths for non-convex smooth optimization problems satisfying the Polyak-Lojasiewicz (PL) inequality. We establish that the PL inequality is a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-04-05 Hadi Abbaszadehpeivasti , Etienne de Klerk , Moslem Zamani

This work assesses both empirically and theoretically, using the performance estimation methodology, how robust different first-order optimization methods are when subject to relative inexactness in their gradient computations. Relative…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-02 Pierre Vernimmen , François Glineur

Due to the non-smoothness of optimization problems in Machine Learning, generalized smoothness assumptions have been gaining a lot of attention in recent years. One of the most popular assumptions of this type is $(L_0,L_1)$-smoothness…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-30 Eduard Gorbunov , Nazarii Tupitsa , Sayantan Choudhury , Alen Aliev , Peter Richtárik , Samuel Horváth , Martin Takáč

In this work, we deal with unconstrained nonlinear optimization problems. Specifically, we are interested in methods carrying out updates possibly along directions not of descent, like Polyak's heavy-ball algorithm. Instead of enforcing…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-27 Federica Donnini , Matteo Lapucci , Pierluigi Mansueto

First order methods endowed with global convergence guarantees operate using global lower bounds on the objective. The tightening of the bounds has been shown to increase both the theoretical guarantees and the practical performance. In…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-04-30 Mihai I. Florea , Yurii Nesterov