Related papers: Analysis of Stochastic Gradient Descent in Continu…

Stochastic gradient algorithms are the main focus of large-scale optimization problems and led to important successes in the recent advancement of the deep learning algorithms. The convergence of SGD depends on the careful choice of…

We study to what extent may stochastic gradient descent (SGD) be understood as a "conventional" learning rule that achieves generalization performance by obtaining a good fit to training data. We consider the fundamental stochastic convex…

In this paper, we propose a new framework to study distributed optimization problems with stochastic gradients by employing a multi-agent system with continuous-time dynamics. Here the goal of the agents is to cooperatively minimize the sum…

In the vanishing learning rate regime, stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is now relatively well understood. In this work, we propose to study the basic properties of SGD and its variants in the non-vanishing learning rate regime. The focus…

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…

As is well known, both sampling from the posterior and computing the mean of the posterior in Gaussian process regression reduces to solving a large linear system of equations. We study the use of stochastic gradient descent for solving…

The stochastic subgradient method is a widely-used algorithm for solving large-scale optimization problems arising in machine learning. Often these problems are neither smooth nor convex. Recently, Davis et al. [1-2] characterized the…

Under mild assumptions stochastic gradient methods asymptotically achieve an optimal rate of convergence if the arithmetic mean of all iterates is returned as an approximate optimal solution. However, in the absence of stochastic noise, the…

There are several applications of stochastic optimization where one can benefit from a robust estimate of the gradient. For example, domains such as distributed learning with corrupted nodes, the presence of large outliers in the training…

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) provides a simple and efficient way to solve a broad range of machine learning problems. Here, we focus on distribution regression (DR), involving two stages of sampling: Firstly, we regress from…

This paper considers stochastic optimization problems for a large class of objective functions, including convex and continuous submodular. Stochastic proximal gradient methods have been widely used to solve such problems; however, their…

Stochastic Gradient (SG) is the defacto iterative technique to solve stochastic optimization (SO) problems with a smooth (non-convex) objective $f$ and a stochastic first-order oracle. SG's attractiveness is due in part to its simplicity of…

Stochastic gradient descent with momentum (SGDM) methods have become fundamental optimization tools in machine learning, combining the computational efficiency of stochastic gradients with the acceleration benefits of momentum. Despite…

In this paper, we establish the almost sure convergence of two-timescale stochastic gradient descent algorithms in continuous time under general noise and stability conditions, extending well known results in discrete time. We analyse…

The graduated optimization approach is a method for finding global optimal solutions for nonconvex functions by using a function smoothing operation with stochastic noise. This paper makes three contributions regarding graduated…

We provide a new understanding of the stochastic gradient bandit algorithm by showing that it converges to a globally optimal policy almost surely using \emph{any} constant learning rate. This result demonstrates that the stochastic…

Classical stochastic gradient methods are well suited for minimizing expected-value objective functions. However, they do not apply to the minimization of a nonlinear function involving expected values or a composition of two expected-value…

We present a theoretical analysis of some popular adaptive Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) methods in the small learning rate regime. Using the stochastic modified equations framework introduced by Li et al., we derive effective…

In this paper, we study the problem of maximizing continuous submodular functions that naturally arise in many learning applications such as those involving utility functions in active learning and sensing, matrix approximations and network…

We address the application of stochastic optimization methods for the simultaneous control of parameter-dependent systems. In particular, we focus on the classical Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) approach of Robbins and Monro, and on the…