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Incremental gradient and incremental proximal methods are a fundamental class of optimization algorithms used for solving finite sum problems, broadly studied in the literature. Yet, without strong convexity, their convergence guarantees…
This paper introduces an iterative algorithm for training nonparametric additive models that enjoys favorable memory storage and computational requirements. The algorithm can be viewed as the functional counterpart of stochastic gradient…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a popular algorithm for optimization problems arising in high-dimensional inference tasks. Here one produces an estimator of an unknown parameter from independent samples of data by iteratively…
Variational inequalities have recently attracted considerable interest in machine learning as a flexible paradigm for models that go beyond ordinary loss function minimization (such as generative adversarial networks and related deep…
Universal methods for optimization are designed to achieve theoretically optimal convergence rates without any prior knowledge of the problem's regularity parameters or the accurarcy of the gradient oracle employed by the optimizer. In this…
In this paper we analyze a zeroth-order proximal stochastic gradient method suitable for the minimization of weakly convex stochastic optimization problems. We consider nonsmooth and nonlinear stochastic composite problems, for which…
We propose efficient methods for solving stochastic simple bilevel optimization problems with convex inner levels, where the goal is to minimize an outer stochastic objective function subject to the solution set of an inner stochastic…
Recent advances in randomized incremental methods for minimizing $L$-smooth $\mu$-strongly convex finite sums have culminated in tight complexity of $\tilde{O}((n+\sqrt{n L/\mu})\log(1/\epsilon))$ and $O(n+\sqrt{nL/\epsilon})$, where…
We consider derivative-free algorithms for stochastic and non-stochastic convex optimization problems that use only function values rather than gradients. Focusing on non-asymptotic bounds on convergence rates, we show that if pairs of…
We provide tight upper and lower bounds on the complexity of minimizing the average of $m$ convex functions using gradient and prox oracles of the component functions. We show a significant gap between the complexity of deterministic vs…
We study the intrinsic limitations of sequential convex optimization through the lens of feedback information theory. In the oracle model of optimization, an algorithm queries an {\em oracle} for noisy information about the unknown…
We develop new stochastic gradient methods for efficiently solving sparse linear regression in a partial attribute observation setting, where learners are only allowed to observe a fixed number of actively chosen attributes per example at…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a foundational algorithm for large-scale statistical learning and stochastic optimization. However, statistical inference based on SGD iterates remains challenging when stochastic gradients have infinite…
We consider stochastic optimization over $\ell_p$ spaces using access to a first-order oracle. We ask: {What is the minimum precision required for oracle outputs to retain the unrestricted convergence rates?} We characterize this precision…
We consider unconstrained minimization of smooth convex functions. We propose a novel variational perspective using forced Euler-Lagrange equation that allows for studying high-resolution ODEs. Through this, we obtain a faster convergence…
We study the unconstrained minimization of a smooth and strongly convex population loss function under a stochastic oracle that introduces both additive and multiplicative noise; this is a canonical and widely-studied setting that arises…
This review presents modern gradient-free methods to solve convex optimization problems. By gradient-free methods, we mean those that use only (noisy) realizations of the objective value. We are motivated by various applications where…
In this work, we describe a generic approach to show convergence with high probability for both stochastic convex and non-convex optimization with sub-Gaussian noise. In previous works for convex optimization, either the convergence is only…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a simple and popular method to solve stochastic optimization problems which arise in machine learning. For strongly convex problems, its convergence rate was known to be O(\log(T)/T), by running SGD for…
We revisit the classical problem of finding an approximately stationary point of the average of $n$ smooth and possibly nonconvex functions. The optimal complexity of stochastic first-order methods in terms of the number of gradient…