Related papers: Escaping Saddle-Points Faster under Interpolation-…

Stochastically controlled stochastic gradient (SCSG) methods have been proved to converge efficiently to first-order stationary points which, however, can be saddle points in nonconvex optimization. It has been observed that a stochastic…

This paper focuses on solving a stochastic saddle point problem (SPP) under an overparameterized regime for the case, when the gradient computation is impractical. As an intermediate step, we generalize Same-sample Stochastic Extra-gradient…

We analyze stochastic conditional gradient methods for constrained optimization problems arising in over-parametrized machine learning. We show that one could leverage the interpolation-like conditions satisfied by such models to obtain…

In this paper, we give a sharp analysis for Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) and prove that SGD is able to efficiently escape from saddle points and find an $(\epsilon, O(\epsilon^{0.5}))$-approximate second-order stationary point in…

We present a comprehensive theoretical analysis of first-order methods for escaping strict saddle points in smooth non-convex optimization. Our main contribution is a Perturbed Saddle-escape Descent (PSD) algorithm with fully explicit…

In this paper, we study the problem of escaping from saddle points in smooth nonconvex optimization problems subject to a convex set $\mathcal{C}$. We propose a generic framework that yields convergence to a second-order stationary point of…

In this paper, we propose a variant of Riemannian stochastic recursive gradient method that can achieve second-order convergence guarantee and escape saddle points using simple perturbation. The idea is to perturb the iterates when gradient…

We analyze stochastic gradient algorithms for optimizing nonconvex problems. In particular, our goal is to find local minima (second-order stationary points) instead of just finding first-order stationary points which may be some bad…

We propose an iterative algorithm for low-rank matrix completion that can be interpreted as both an iteratively reweighted least squares (IRLS) algorithm and a saddle-escaping smoothing Newton method applied to a non-convex rank surrogate…

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…

Modern machine learning paradigms, such as deep learning, occur in or close to the interpolation regime, wherein the number of model parameters is much larger than the number of data samples. In this work, we propose a regularity condition…

Under interpolation-type assumptions such as the strong growth condition, stochastic optimization methods can attain convergence rates comparable to full-batch methods, but their performance, particularly for SGD, remains highly sensitive…

Implicit regularization refers to the tendency of local search algorithms to converge to low-dimensional solutions, even when such structures are not explicitly enforced. Despite its ubiquity, the mechanism underlying this behavior remains…

Gradient-related first-order methods have become the workhorse of large-scale numerical optimization problems. Many of these problems involve nonconvex objective functions with multiple saddle points, which necessitates an understanding of…

Motivated by the super-diffusivity of self-repelling random walk, which has roots in statistical physics, this paper develops a new perturbation mechanism for optimization algorithms. In this mechanism, perturbations are adapted to the…

This paper shows that a perturbed form of gradient descent converges to a second-order stationary point in a number iterations which depends only poly-logarithmically on dimension (i.e., it is almost "dimension-free"). The convergence rate…

In centralized settings, it is well known that stochastic gradient descent (SGD) avoids saddle points and converges to local minima in nonconvex problems. However, similar guarantees are lacking for distributed first-order algorithms. The…

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…

Machine learning problems such as neural network training, tensor decomposition, and matrix factorization, require local minimization of a nonconvex function. This local minimization is challenged by the presence of saddle points, of which…

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…