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We study the distributed stochastic optimization (DSO) problem under a heavy-tailed noise condition by utilizing a multi-agent system. Despite the extensive research on DSO algorithms used to solve DSO problems under light-tailed noise…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-23 Zhan Yu , Lan Liao , Deming Yuan , Daniel W. C. Ho , Ding-Xuan Zhou

Recent works have proposed incorporating heavy-tailed (HT) noise into diffusion- and flow-based generative models, with the goals of better recovering the tails of target distributions and improving generative diversity. This motivation is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Hamza Cherkaoui , Hélène Halconruy , Antonio Ocello

Recent studies have shown that gradient descent (GD) can achieve improved generalization when its dynamics exhibits a chaotic behavior. However, to obtain the desired effect, the step-size should be chosen sufficiently large, a task which…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-10-25 Soon Hoe Lim , Yijun Wan , Umut Şimşekli

Heavy-tailed noise in nonconvex stochastic optimization has garnered increasing research interest, as empirical studies, including those on training attention models, suggest it is a more realistic gradient noise condition. This paper…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-17 Shuhua Yu , Dusan Jakovetic , Soummya Kar

Cyclic and randomized stepsizes are widely used in the deep learning practice and can often outperform standard stepsize choices such as constant stepsize in SGD. Despite their empirical success, not much is currently known about when and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-08-30 Mert Gürbüzbalaban , Yuanhan Hu , Umut Şimşekli , Lingjiong Zhu

We study stochastic nonconvex optimization under heavy-tailed noise. In this setting, the stochastic gradients only have bounded $p$-th central moment ($p$-BCM) for some $p \in (1,2]$. Building on the foundational work of Arjevani et al.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-01 Adrien Fradin , Abdurakhmon Sadiev , Laurent Condat , Peter Richtárik

We investigate high-dimensional sparse regression when both the noise and the design matrix exhibit heavy-tailed behavior. Standard algorithms typically fail in this regime, as heavy-tailed covariates distort the empirical risk geometry. We…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-01-12 Kaiyuan Zhou , Xiaoyu Zhang , Wenyang Zhang , Di Wang

Despite an extensive body of literature on deep learning optimization, our current understanding of what makes an optimization algorithm effective is fragmented. In particular, we do not understand well whether enhanced optimization…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-04 Toki Tahmid Inan , Mingrui Liu , Amarda Shehu

The gradient noise (GN) in the stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm is often considered to be Gaussian in the large data regime by assuming that the classical central limit theorem (CLT) kicks in. This assumption is often made for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-01-21 Umut Simsekli , Levent Sagun , Mert Gurbuzbalaban

High-probability analysis of stochastic first-order optimization methods under mild assumptions on the noise has been gaining a lot of attention in recent years. Typically, gradient clipping is one of the key algorithmic ingredients to…

Varied sensory systems use noise in order to enhance detection of weak signals. It has been conjectured in the literature that this effect, known as stochastic resonance, may take place in central cognitive processes such as the memory…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2007-05-23 Julien Mayor , Wulfram Gerstner

This paper considers the problem of asynchronous stochastic nonconvex optimization with heavy-tailed gradient noise and arbitrarily heterogeneous computation times across workers. We propose an asynchronous normalized stochastic gradient…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-28 Yidong Wu , Luo Luo

Robust stability and stochastic stability have separately seen intense study in control theory for many decades. In this work we establish relations between these properties for discrete-time systems and employ them for robust control…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2020-04-20 Benjamin Gravell , Peyman Mohajerin Esfahani , Tyler Summers

Learning with a {\it convex loss} function has been a dominating paradigm for many years. It remains an interesting question how non-convex loss functions help improve the generalization of learning with broad applicability. In this paper,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-05-22 Yi Xu , Shenghuo Zhu , Sen Yang , Chi Zhang , Rong Jin , Tianbao Yang

Gradient descent (GD) and stochastic gradient descent (SGD) are the workhorses of large-scale machine learning. While classical theory focused on analyzing the performance of these methods in convex optimization problems, the most notable…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-05 Chi Jin , Praneeth Netrapalli , Rong Ge , Sham M. Kakade , Michael I. Jordan

Gradient clipping is a commonly used technique to stabilize the training process of neural networks. A growing body of studies has shown that gradient clipping is a promising technique for dealing with the heavy-tailed behavior that emerged…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-26 Shaojie Li , Yong Liu

Recent empirical evidence indicates that many machine learning applications involve heavy-tailed gradient noise, which challenges the standard assumptions of bounded variance in stochastic optimization. Gradient clipping has emerged as a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-10 Florian Hübler , Ilyas Fatkhullin , Niao He

A growing lesson from neural network optimization is that optimizer design should respect how the model is parametrized. Scale-invariant methods become important because their normalized layerwise updates can not only support hyperparameter…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-19 Jiayu Zhang , Tianyi Lin

In animal groups, individual decisions are best characterised by probabilistic rules. Furthermore, animals of many species live in small groups. Probabilistic interactions among small numbers of individuals lead to a so called intrinsic…

Populations and Evolution · Quantitative Biology 2020-04-23 Jitesh Jhawar , Vishwesha Guttal

Stochastic first-order methods such as Stochastic Extragradient (SEG) or Stochastic Gradient Descent-Ascent (SGDA) for solving smooth minimax problems and, more generally, variational inequality problems (VIP) have been gaining a lot of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-11-02 Eduard Gorbunov , Marina Danilova , David Dobre , Pavel Dvurechensky , Alexander Gasnikov , Gauthier Gidel