Related papers: An adaptive stochastic gradient-free approach for …
We study finite-sum nonconvex optimization problems, where the objective function is an average of $n$ nonconvex functions. We propose a new stochastic gradient descent algorithm based on nested variance reduction. Compared with…
Hessian-free (HF) optimization has been successfully used for training deep autoencoders and recurrent networks. HF uses the conjugate gradient algorithm to construct update directions through curvature-vector products that can be computed…
In this paper, we study stochastic minimax problems with decision-dependent distributions (SMDD), where the probability distribution of stochastic variable depends on decision variable. For SMDD with nonconvex-(strongly) concave objective…
This paper introduces new parameter-free first-order methods for convex optimization problems in which the objective function exhibits H\"{o}lder smoothness. Inspired by the recently proposed distance-over-gradient (DOG) technique, we…
This paper proposes a stochastic gradient descent method with an adaptive Gaussian noise term for the global minimization of nearly convex functions, which are nonconvex and possess multiple strict local minimizers. The noise term,…
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…
This work analyzes the convergence of a class of smoothing-based gradient descent methods when applied to optimization problems. In particular, Gaussian smoothing is employed to define a nonlocal gradient that reduces high-frequency noise,…
In this paper, we address stochastic optimization problems involving a composition of a non-smooth outer function and a smooth inner function, a formulation frequently encountered in machine learning and operations research. To deal with…
This paper considers a class of convex constrained nonsmooth convex stochastic composite optimization problems whose objective function is given by the summation of a differentiable convex component, together with a general nonsmooth but…
This paper studies non-smooth problems of convex stochastic optimization. Using the smoothing technique based on the replacement of the function value at the considered point by the averaged function value over a ball (in $l_1$-norm or…
We study convex optimization problems over a compact convex set where projections are expensive but a linear minimization oracle (LMO) is available. We propose the adaptive conditional gradient sliding method (AdCGS), a projection-free and…
Training deep neural network is a high dimensional and a highly non-convex optimization problem. Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm and it's variations are the current state-of-the-art solvers for this task. However, due to…
We consider smooth stochastic convex optimization problems in the context of algorithms which are based on directional derivatives of the objective function. This context can be considered as an intermediate one between derivative-free…
Proximal gradient method has been playing an important role to solve many machine learning tasks, especially for the nonsmooth problems. However, in some machine learning problems such as the bandit model and the black-box learning problem,…
This paper concerns a convex, stochastic zeroth-order optimization (S-ZOO) problem. The objective is to minimize the expectation of a cost function whose gradient is not directly accessible. For this problem, traditional optimization…
We study adaptive methods for differentially private convex optimization, proposing and analyzing differentially private variants of a Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) algorithm with adaptive stepsizes, as well as the AdaGrad algorithm. We…
This paper presents an algorithmic framework for solving unconstrained stochastic optimization problems using only stochastic function evaluations. We employ central finite-difference based gradient estimation methods to approximate the…
Derivative-free optimization has become an important technique used in machine learning for optimizing black-box models. To conduct updates without explicitly computing gradient, most current approaches iteratively sample a random search…
We propose a novel stochastic smoothing accelerated gradient (SSAG) method for general constrained nonsmooth convex composite optimization, and analyze the convergence rates. The SSAG method allows various smoothing techniques, and can deal…
Adaptive gradient algorithms perform gradient-based updates using the history of gradients and are ubiquitous in training deep neural networks. While adaptive gradient methods theory is well understood for minimization problems, the…