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Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with mini-batching is a standard tool in large-scale optimization, yet its theoretical properties under heavy-tailed gradient noise remain largely unexplored. In this paper we study SGD with increasing…

Stochastic convex optimization algorithms are the most popular way to train machine learning models on large-scale data. Scaling up the training process of these models is crucial, but the most popular algorithm, Stochastic Gradient Descent…

Two timescale stochastic approximation (SA) has been widely used in value-based reinforcement learning algorithms. In the policy evaluation setting, it can model the linear and nonlinear temporal difference learning with gradient correction…

We propose a deep generative Markov State Model (DeepGenMSM) learning framework for inference of metastable dynamical systems and prediction of trajectories. After unsupervised training on time series data, the model contains (i) a…

Many problems of practical interest rely on Continuous-time Markov chains~(CTMCs) defined over combinatorial state spaces, rendering the computation of transition probabilities, and hence probabilistic inference, difficult or impossible…

Graph neural networks (GNNs) model nonlinear representations in graph data with applications in distributed agent coordination, control, and planning among others. Current GNN architectures assume ideal scenarios and ignore link…

Motivated by queues with many servers, we study Brownian steady-state approximations for continuous time Markov chains (CTMCs). Our approximations are based on diffusion models (rather than a diffusion limit) whose steady-state, we prove,…

We are interested in understanding stability (almost sure boundedness) of stochastic approximation algorithms (SAs) driven by a `controlled Markov' process. Analyzing this class of algorithms is important, since many reinforcement learning…

We consider stochastic optimization problems where data is drawn from a Markov chain. Existing methods for this setting crucially rely on knowing the mixing time of the chain, which in real-world applications is usually unknown. We propose…

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) based methods have been widely used for training large-scale machine learning models that also generalize well in practice. Several explanations have been offered for this generalization performance, a…

This paper contributes an in-depth study of properties of continuous time Markov chains (CTMCs) on non-negative integer lattices $\N_0^d$, with particular interest in one-dimensional CTMCs with polynomial transitions rates. Such stochastic…

As sample sizes grow, scalability has become a central concern in the development of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. One general approach to this problem, exemplified by the popular stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics (SGLD)…

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) and its variants are almost universally used to train neural networks and to fit a variety of other parametric models. An important hyperparameter in this context is the batch size, which determines how…

In this paper we introduce a unified analysis of a large family of variants of proximal stochastic gradient descent ({\tt SGD}) which so far have required different intuitions, convergence analyses, have different applications, and which…

Stochastic gradient methods (SGMs) are the predominant approaches to train deep learning models. The adaptive versions (e.g., Adam and AMSGrad) have been extensively used in practice, partly because they achieve faster convergence than the…

In an influential paper, Courtois and Semal (1984) establish that when $G$ is an irreducible substochastic matrix for which $\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}G^n <\infty$, then the stationary distribution of any stochastic matrix $P\ge G$ can be…

Continual learning, focused on sequentially learning multiple tasks, has gained significant attention recently. Despite the tremendous progress made in the past, the theoretical understanding, especially factors contributing to catastrophic…

To sample from a given target distribution, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling relies on constructing an ergodic Markov chain with the target distribution as its invariant measure. For any MCMC method, an important question is how to…

Asynchronous stochastic gradient descent (SGD) enables scalable distributed training but suffers from gradient staleness. Existing mitigation strategies, such as delay-adaptive learning rates and staleness-aware filtering, typically…

Stochastically controlled stochastic gradient (SCSG) methods have been proved to converge efficiently to first-order stationary points which, however, can be saddle points in nonconvex optimization. It has been observed that a stochastic…