Related papers: Using gradient directions to get global convergenc…
The state-of-the-art methods for solving optimization problems in big dimensions are variants of randomized coordinate descent (RCD). In this paper we introduce a fundamentally new type of acceleration strategy for RCD based on the…
We consider a distributed multi-agent optimization problem over a time-invariant undirected graph, where each agent possesses a local objective function and all agents collaboratively minimize the average of all objective functions through…
We study the generalization performance of gradient methods in the fundamental stochastic convex optimization setting, focusing on its dimension dependence. First, for full-batch gradient descent (GD) we give a construction of a learning…
We revisit the choice of SGD for training deep neural networks by reconsidering the appropriate geometry in which to optimize the weights. We argue for a geometry invariant to rescaling of weights that does not affect the output of the…
We analyze a batched variant of Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) with weighted sampling distribution for smooth and non-smooth objective functions. We show that by distributing the batches computationally, a significant speedup in the…
The paper considers the problem of network-based computation of global minima in smooth nonconvex optimization problems. It is known that distributed gradient-descent-type algorithms can achieve convergence to the set of global minima by…
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…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm and its variations have been effectively used to optimize neural network models. However, with the rapid growth of big data and deep learning, SGD is no longer the most suitable choice due to its…
A new decomposition optimization algorithm, called \textit{path-following gradient-based decomposition}, is proposed to solve separable convex optimization problems. Unlike path-following Newton methods considered in the literature, this…
Recently, there has been significant progress in the development of distributed first order methods. (At least) two different types of methods, designed from very different perspectives, have been proposed that achieve both exact and linear…
This paper studies the convergence rates of the Broyden--Fletcher--Goldfarb--Shanno~(BFGS) method without line search. We show that the BFGS method with an adaptive step size [Gao and Goldfarb, Optimization Methods and Software,…
The use of network Newton methods for the decentralized optimization of a sum cost distributed through agents of a network is considered. Network Newton methods reinterpret distributed gradient descent as a penalty method, observe that the…
In this paper, we propose a generic and simple strategy for utilizing stochastic gradient information in optimization. The technique essentially contains two consecutive steps in each iteration: 1) computing and normalizing each block…
Batch normalization (BN) has become a critical component across diverse deep neural networks. The network with BN is invariant to positively linear re-scale transformation, which makes there exist infinite functionally equivalent networks…
Machine learning, especially deep neural networks, has been rapidly developed in fields including computer vision, speech recognition and reinforcement learning. Although Mini-batch SGD is one of the most popular stochastic optimization…
Ordinary differential equations (ODEs) are widely used to describe the time evolution of natural phenomena across various scientific fields. Estimating the parameters of these systems from data is a challenging task, particularly when…
Gradient methods are frequently used in large scale image deblurring problems since they avoid the onerous computation of the Hessian matrix of the objective function. Second order information is typically sought by a clever choice of the…
Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) was recently proposed as a general purpose nonparametric variational inference algorithm [Liu & Wang, NIPS 2016]: it minimizes the Kullback-Leibler divergence between the target distribution and its…
Although it is relatively easy to apply, the gradient method often displays a disappointingly slow rate of convergence. Its convergence is specially based on the structure of the matrix of the algebraic linear system, and on the choice of…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is a workhorse in machine learning, yet its slow convergence can be a computational bottleneck. Variance reduction techniques such as SAG, SVRG and SAGA have been proposed to overcome this weakness,…