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Zeroth-order optimization (ZO) typically relies on two-point feedback to estimate the unknown gradient of the objective function. Nevertheless, two-point feedback can not be used for online optimization of time-varying objective functions,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-04 Yan Zhang , Yi Zhou , Kaiyi Ji , Michael M. Zavlanos

Zeroth-order optimization (ZO) has been a powerful framework for solving black-box problems, which estimates gradients using zeroth-order data to update variables iteratively. The practical applicability of ZO critically depends on the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-03 Ruiyang Jin , Yuke Zhou , Yujie Tang , Jie Song , Siyang Gao

We consider the closely related problems of bandit convex optimization with two-point feedback, and zero-order stochastic convex optimization with two function evaluations per round. We provide a simple algorithm and analysis which is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-08-03 Ohad Shamir

Zeroth-order optimization (ZO) is widely used for solving black-box optimization and control problems. In particular, single-point ZO (SZO) is well-suited to online or dynamic problem settings due to its requirement of only a single…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-06 Xin Chen , Zhaolin Ren

This work considers stochastic optimization problems in which the objective function values can only be computed by a blackbox corrupted by some random noise following an unknown distribution. The proposed method is based on sequential…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-08-15 Charles Audet , Jean Bigeon , Romain Couderc , Michael Kokkolaras

We revisit the one-point feedback zeroth-order (ZO) optimization problem, a classical setting in derivative-free optimization where only a single noisy function evaluation is available per query. Compared to their two-point counterparts,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-08-19 Haishan Ye , Xiangyu Chang

We consider a zeroth-order distributed optimization problem, where the global objective function is a black-box function and, as such, its gradient information is inaccessible to the local agents. Instead, the local agents can only use the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-09-29 Yi Shen , Yan Zhang , Scott Nivison , Zachary I. Bell , Michael M. Zavlanos

A major challenge of applying zeroth-order (ZO) methods is the high query complexity, especially when queries are costly. We propose a novel gradient estimation technique for ZO methods based on adaptive lazy queries that we term as LAZO.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-16 Quan Xiao , Qing Ling , Tianyi Chen

In this work, we consider a distributed multi-agent stochastic optimization problem, where each agent holds a local objective function that is smooth and convex, and that is subject to a stochastic process. The goal is for all agents to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-10-12 Elissa Mhanna , Mohamad Assaad

In this work, we focus on the study of stochastic zeroth-order (ZO) optimization which does not require first-order gradient information and uses only function evaluations. The problem of ZO optimization has emerged in many recent machine…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-12-22 Pranay Sharma , Kaidi Xu , Sijia Liu , Pin-Yu Chen , Xue Lin , Pramod K. Varshney

Single-point zeroth-order optimization (SZO) is useful in solving online black-box optimization and control problems in time-varying environments, as it queries the function value only once at each time step. However, the vanilla SZO method…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-06-20 Xin Chen , Yujie Tang , Na Li

Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization with ordinal feedback has emerged as a fundamental problem in modern machine learning systems, particularly in human-in-the-loop settings such as reinforcement learning from human feedback, preference…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-23 Haishan Ye

Zero-order (ZO) optimization is a powerful tool for dealing with realistic constraints. On the other hand, the gradient-tracking (GT) technique proved to be an efficient method for distributed optimization aiming to achieve consensus.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-10 Elissa Mhanna , Mohamad Assaad

In this paper, we study the standard formulation of an optimization problem when the computation of gradient is not available. Such a problem can be classified as a "black box" optimization problem, since the oracle returns only the value…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-30 Aleksandr Lobanov , Nail Bashirov , Alexander Gasnikov

Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization is a subset of gradient-free optimization that emerges in many signal processing and machine learning applications. It is used for solving optimization problems similarly to gradient-based methods. However, it…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-23 Sijia Liu , Pin-Yu Chen , Bhavya Kailkhura , Gaoyuan Zhang , Alfred Hero , Pramod K. Varshney

We consider the problem of minimizing a high-dimensional objective function, which may include a regularization term, using (possibly noisy) evaluations of the function. Such optimization is also called derivative-free, zeroth-order, or…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-03-20 HanQin Cai , Daniel Mckenzie , Wotao Yin , Zhenliang Zhang

In this study, we consider an optimization problem with uncertainty dependent on decision variables, which has recently attracted attention due to its importance in machine learning and pricing applications. In this problem, the gradient of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-31 Yuya Hikima , Akiko Takeda

In this study, we delve into an emerging optimization challenge involving a black-box objective function that can only be gauged via a ranking oracle-a situation frequently encountered in real-world scenarios, especially when the function…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-16 Zhiwei Tang , Dmitry Rybin , Tsung-Hui Chang

$\ell_0$ constrained optimization is prevalent in machine learning, particularly for high-dimensional problems, because it is a fundamental approach to achieve sparse learning. Hard-thresholding gradient descent is a dominant technique to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-19 William de Vazelhes , Hualin Zhang , Huimin Wu , Xiao-Tong Yuan , Bin Gu

Safe derivative-free optimization under unknown constraints is a fundamental challenge in modern learning and control. Existing zeroth-order (ZO) methods typically still assume access to a first-order oracle of the constraint functions or…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-29 Runyu Zhang , Gioele Zardini , Asuman Ozdaglar , Jeff Shamma , Na Li
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