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In this paper, we study zeroth-order algorithms for nonconvex-concave minimax problems, which have attracted widely attention in machine learning, signal processing and many other fields in recent years. We propose a zeroth-order…
We consider gradient descent with constant stepsizes and derive exact worst-case convergence rates on the minimum gradient norm of the iterates. Our analysis covers all possible stepsizes and arbitrary upper/lower bounds on the curvature of…
In distributed machine learning, efficient training across multiple agents with different data distributions poses significant challenges. Even with a centralized coordinator, current algorithms that achieve optimal communication complexity…
We develop model-based methods for solving stochastic convex optimization problems, introducing the approximate-proximal point, or aProx, family, which includes stochastic subgradient, proximal point, and bundle methods. When the modeling…
A stochastic-gradient-based interior-point algorithm for minimizing a continuously differentiable objective function (that may be nonconvex) subject to bound constraints is presented, analyzed, and demonstrated through experimental results.…
In this paper, we propose a proximal gradient method and an accelerated proximal gradient method for solving composite optimization problems, where the objective function is the sum of a smooth and a convex, possibly nonsmooth, function. We…
We consider convex-concave saddle point problems with a separable structure and non-strongly convex functions. We propose an efficient stochastic block coordinate descent method using adaptive primal-dual updates, which enables flexible…
Consider convex optimization problems subject to a large number of constraints. We focus on stochastic problems in which the objective takes the form of expected values and the feasible set is the intersection of a large number of convex…
In this paper, we focus on solving a class of constrained non-convex non-concave saddle point problems in a decentralized manner by a group of nodes in a network. Specifically, we assume that each node has access to a summand of a global…
Matrix completion has attracted much interest in the past decade in machine learning and computer vision. For low-rank promotion in matrix completion, the nuclear norm penalty is convenient due to its convexity but has a bias problem.…
This paper focuses on stochastic methods for solving smooth non-convex strongly-concave min-max problems, which have received increasing attention due to their potential applications in deep learning (e.g., deep AUC maximization,…
The stochastic gradient (SG) method can minimize an objective function composed of a large number of differentiable functions, or solve a stochastic optimization problem, to a moderate accuracy. The block coordinate descent/update (BCD)…
We show that the primal-dual gradient method, also known as the gradient descent ascent method, for solving convex-concave minimax problems can be viewed as an inexact gradient method applied to the primal problem. The gradient, whose exact…
Nonconvex-concave min-max problem arises in many machine learning applications including minimizing a pointwise maximum of a set of nonconvex functions and robust adversarial training of neural networks. A popular approach to solve this…
Efficient methods to provide sub-optimal solutions to non-convex optimization problems with knowledge of the solution's sub-optimality would facilitate the widespread application of nonlinear optimal control algorithms. To that end,…
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,…
We introduce a generic scheme to solve nonconvex optimization problems using gradient-based algorithms originally designed for minimizing convex functions. Even though these methods may originally require convexity to operate, the proposed…
Conditional stochastic optimization covers a variety of applications ranging from invariant learning and causal inference to meta-learning. However, constructing unbiased gradient estimators for such problems is challenging due to the…
Selecting an effective step-size is a fundamental challenge in first-order optimization, especially for problems with non-Euclidean geometries. This paper presents a novel adaptive step-size strategy for optimization algorithms that rely on…
The graduated optimization approach, also known as the continuation method, is a popular heuristic to solving non-convex problems that has received renewed interest over the last decade. Despite its popularity, very little is known in terms…