Related papers: An Adaptive High Order Method for Finding Third-Or…
Local search heuristics for non-convex optimizations are popular in applied machine learning. However, in general it is hard to guarantee that such algorithms even converge to a local minimum, due to the existence of complicated saddle…
A central challenge to using first-order methods for optimizing nonconvex problems is the presence of saddle points. First-order methods often get stuck at saddle points, greatly deteriorating their performance. Typically, to escape from…
In this paper, we study nonconvex constrained optimization problems with both equality and inequality constraints, covering deterministic and stochastic settings. We propose a novel first-order algorithm framework that employs a…
Momentum-based gradients are essential for optimizing advanced machine learning models, as they not only accelerate convergence but also advance optimizers to escape stationary points. While most state-of-the-art momentum techniques utilize…
Recently, saddle point problems have received much attention due to their powerful modeling capability for a lot of problems from diverse domains. Applications of these problems occur in many applied areas, such as robust optimization,…
We propose and analyze several inexact regularized Newton-type methods for finding a global saddle point of convex-concave unconstrained min-max optimization problems. Compared to first-order methods, our understanding of second-order…
Necessary conditions for high-order optimality in smooth nonlinear constrained optimization are explored and their inherent intricacy discussed. A two-phase minimization algorithm is proposed which can achieve approximate first-, second-…
We propose stochastic optimization algorithms that can find local minima faster than existing algorithms for nonconvex optimization problems, by exploiting the third-order smoothness to escape non-degenerate saddle points more efficiently.…
Higher-order tensor methods were recently proposed for minimizing smooth convex and nonconvex functions. Higher-order algorithms accelerate the convergence of the classical first-order methods thanks to the higher-order derivatives used in…
In this paper, we propose and analyze zeroth-order stochastic approximation algorithms for nonconvex and convex optimization, with a focus on addressing constrained optimization, high-dimensional setting and saddle-point avoiding. To handle…
We present a stochastic optimization method that uses a fourth-order regularized model to find local minima of smooth and potentially non-convex objective functions with a finite-sum structure. This algorithm uses sub-sampled derivatives…
A central challenge to many fields of science and engineering involves minimizing non-convex error functions over continuous, high dimensional spaces. Gradient descent or quasi-Newton methods are almost ubiquitously used to perform such…
Optimizing non-convex functions is of primary importance in the vast majority of machine learning algorithms. Even though many gradient descent based algorithms have been studied, successive convex approximation based algorithms have been…
In this paper we propose third-order methods for composite convex optimization problems in which the smooth part is a three-times continuously differentiable function with Lipschitz continuous third-order derivatives. The methods are…
We provide improved convergence rates for various \emph{non-smooth} optimization problems via higher-order accelerated methods. In the case of $\ell_\infty$ regression, we achieves an $O(\epsilon^{-4/5})$ iteration complexity, breaking the…
This paper proposes a homogeneous second-order descent framework (HSODF) for nonconvex and convex optimization based on the generalized homogeneous model (GHM). In comparison to the Newton steps, the GHM can be solved by extremal symmetric…
This paper studies second-order methods for convex-concave minimax optimization. Monteiro and Svaiter (2012) proposed a method to solve the problem with an optimal iteration complexity of $\mathcal{O}(\epsilon^{-3/2})$ to find an…
In this paper, we introduce a Homogeneous Second-Order Descent Method (HSODM) using the homogenized quadratic approximation to the original function. The merit of homogenization is that only the leftmost eigenvector of a gradient-Hessian…
This study introduces two second-order methods designed to provably avoid saddle points in composite nonconvex optimization problems: (i) a nonsmooth trust-region method and (ii) a curvilinear linesearch method. These developments are…
Saddle-point problems have recently gained increased attention from the machine learning community, mainly due to applications in training Generative Adversarial Networks using stochastic gradients. At the same time, in some applications…