Related papers: Memory-efficient structured convex optimization vi…
We consider the problem of covariance matrix estimation in the presence of latent variables. Under suitable conditions, it is possible to learn the marginal covariance matrix of the observed variables via a tractable convex program, where…
This work develops novel strategies for optimal planning with semantic observations using continuous state partially observable markov decision processes (CPOMDPs). Two major innovations are presented in relation to Gaussian mixture (GM)…
We propose stochastic variance reduced algorithms for solving convex-concave saddle point problems, monotone variational inequalities, and monotone inclusions. Our framework applies to extragradient, forward-backward-forward, and…
Given an affine space of matrices $\mathcal{L}$ and a matrix $\Theta\in \mathcal{L}$, consider the problem of computing the closest rank deficient matrix to $\Theta$ on $\mathcal{L}$ with respect to the Frobenius norm. This is a nonconvex…
An algorithm for unconstrained non-convex optimization is described, which does not evaluate the objective function and in which minimization is carried out, at each iteration, within a randomly selected subspace. It is shown that this…
We propose a family of recursive cutting-plane algorithms to solve feasibility problems with constrained memory, which can also be used for first-order convex optimization. Precisely, in order to find a point within a ball of radius…
Non-linear Trajectory Optimisation (TO) methods require good initial guesses to converge to a locally optimal solution. A feasible guess can often be obtained by allocating a large amount of time for the trajectory to complete. However for…
In the simultaneous Max-Cut problem, we are given $k$ weighted graphs on the same set of $n$ vertices, and the goal is to find a cut of the vertex set so that the minimum, over the $k$ graphs, of the cut value is as large as possible.…
Submodular maximization is one of the central topics in combinatorial optimization. It has found numerous applications in the real world. In the past decades, a series of algorithms have been proposed for this problem. However, most of the…
We propose an inexact variable-metric proximal point algorithm to accelerate gradient-based optimization algorithms. The proposed scheme, called QNing can be notably applied to incremental first-order methods such as the stochastic…
We consider the problem of learning an $\varepsilon$-optimal policy in a general class of continuous-space Markov decision processes (MDPs) having smooth Bellman operators. Given access to a generative model, we achieve rate-optimal sample…
In this paper, we consider constrained optimization problems with convex, smooth objective and constraints. We propose a new stochastic gradient algorithm, called the Stochastic Moving Ball Approximation (SMBA) method, to solve this class…
Feature attribution methods, or saliency maps, are one of the most popular approaches for explaining the decisions of complex machine learning models such as deep neural networks. In this study, we propose a stochastic optimization approach…
Many problems of theoretical and practical interest involve finding an optimum over a family of convex functions. For instance, finding the projection on the convex functions in $H^k(\Omega)$, and optimizing functionals arising from some…
We present an exact algorithm for mean-risk optimization subject to a budget constraint, where decision variables may be continuous or integer. The risk is measured by the covariance matrix and weighted by an arbitrary monotone function,…
Policy optimization is among the most popular and successful reinforcement learning algorithms, and there is increasing interest in understanding its theoretical guarantees. In this work, we initiate the study of policy optimization for the…
Optimization problems involving sequential decisions in a stochastic environment were studied in Stochastic Programming (SP), Stochastic Optimal Control (SOC) and Markov Decision Processes (MDP). In this paper we mainly concentrate on SP…
We study a family of (potentially non-convex) constrained optimization problems with convex composite structure. Through a novel analysis of non-smooth geometry, we show that proximal-type algorithms applied to exact penalty formulations of…
We develop fixed-point algorithms for the approximation of structured matrices with rank penalties. In particular we use these fixed-point algorithms for making approximations by sums of exponentials, or frequency estimation. For the basic…
Symmetric submodular maximization is an important class of combinatorial optimization problems, including MAX-CUT on graphs and hyper-graphs. The state-of-the-art algorithm for the problem over general constraints has an approximation ratio…