Related papers: An adaptive stochastic gradient-free approach for …
In this paper, we introduce a new stochastic approximation (SA) type algorithm, namely the randomized stochastic gradient (RSG) method, for solving an important class of nonlinear (possibly nonconvex) stochastic programming (SP) problems.…
We study Stochastic Gradient Descent with AdaGrad stepsizes: a popular adaptive (self-tuning) method for first-order stochastic optimization. Despite being well studied, existing analyses of this method suffer from various shortcomings:…
We present the remote stochastic gradient (RSG) method, which computes the gradients at configurable remote observation points, in order to improve the convergence rate and suppress gradient noise at the same time for different curvatures.…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a popular and efficient method with wide applications in training deep neural nets and other nonconvex models. While the behavior of SGD is well understood in the convex learning setting, the existing…
For finite-dimensional problems, stochastic approximation methods have long been used to solve stochastic optimization problems. Their application to infinite-dimensional problems is less understood, particularly for nonconvex objectives.…
In this paper, we provide a sub-gradient based algorithm to solve general constrained convex optimization without taking projections onto the domain set. The well studied Frank-Wolfe type algorithms also avoid projections. However, they are…
A new algorithm for smooth constrained optimization is proposed that never computes the value of the problem's objective function and that handles both equality and inequality constraints. The algorithm uses an adaptive switching strategy…
Gradient-based optimization is now ubiquitous across graphics, but unfortunately can not be applied to problems with undefined or zero gradients. To circumvent this issue, the loss function can be manually replaced by a ``surrogate'' that…
The stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method is a widely used approach for solving stochastic optimization problems, but its convergence is typically slow. Existing variance reduction techniques, such as SAGA, improve convergence by…
In this paper, we propose a stochastic search algorithm for solving general optimization problems with little structure. The algorithm iteratively finds high quality solutions by randomly sampling candidate solutions from a parameterized…
Alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is a popular optimization tool for the composite and constrained problems in machine learning. However, in many machine learning problems such as black-box attacks and bandit feedback, ADMM…
We consider solving nonlinear optimization problems with a stochastic objective and deterministic equality constraints. We assume for the objective that its evaluation, gradient, and Hessian are inaccessible, while one can compute their…
High sensitivity of neural architecture search (NAS) methods against their input such as step-size (i.e., learning rate) and search space prevents practitioners from applying them out-of-the-box to their own problems, albeit its purpose is…
Optimization and control of complex unsteady flows remains an important challenge due to the large cost of performing a function evaluation, i.e. a full computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. Reducing the number of required function…
We propose a novel algorithm that extends the methods of ball smoothing and Gaussian smoothing for noisy derivative-free optimization by accounting for the heterogeneous curvature of the objective function. The algorithm dynamically adapts…
Stochastic-gradient-based optimization has been a core enabling methodology in applications to large-scale problems in machine learning and related areas. Despite the progress, the gap between theory and practice remains significant, with…
In this work, we study the gradient projection method for solving a class of stochastic control problems by using a mesh free approximation approach to implement spatial dimension approximation. Our main contribution is to extend the…
We study distributed optimization algorithms for minimizing the average of \emph{heterogeneous} functions distributed across several machines with a focus on communication efficiency. In such settings, naively using the classical stochastic…
Backtracking linesearch is the de facto approach for minimizing continuously differentiable functions with locally Lipschitz gradient. In recent years, it has been shown that in the convex setting it is possible to avoid linesearch…
This paper presents a novel stochastic gradient descent algorithm for constrained optimization. The proposed algorithm randomly samples constraints and components of the finite sum objective function and relies on a relaxed logarithmic…