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This paper investigates a class of stochastic bilevel optimization problems where the upper-level function is nonconvex with potentially unbounded smoothness and the lower-level problem is strongly convex. These problems have significant…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-16 Xiaochuan Gong , Jie Hao , Mingrui Liu

Categorical data are present in key areas such as health or supply chain, and this data require specific treatment. In order to apply recent machine learning models on such data, encoding is needed. In order to build interpretable models,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-19 Paul Peseux , Maxime Berar , Thierry Paquet , Victor Nicollet

We provide a framework for computing the exact worst-case performance of any algorithm belonging to a broad class of oracle-based first-order methods for composite convex optimization, including those performing explicit, projected,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-11-22 Adrien B. Taylor , Julien M. Hendrickx , François Glineur

In this paper, we consider gradient methods for minimizing smooth convex functions, which employ the information obtained at the previous iterations in order to accelerate the convergence towards the optimal solution. This information is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-06-02 Yurii Nesterov , Mihai I. Florea

We present a uniform analysis of biased stochastic gradient methods for minimizing convex, strongly convex, and non-convex composite objectives, and identify settings where bias is useful in stochastic gradient estimation. The framework we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-02-28 Derek Driggs , Jingwei Liang , Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb

This work is devoted to solving the composite optimization problem with the mixture oracle: for the smooth part of the problem, we have access to the gradient, and for the non-smooth part, only the one-point zero-order oracle is available.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-23 Aleksandr Beznosikov , Ivan Stepanov , Artyom Voronov , Alexander Gasnikov

This work studies minimization problems with zero-order noisy oracle information under the assumption that the objective function is highly smooth and possibly satisfies additional properties. We consider two kinds of zero-order projected…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-06-06 Arya Akhavan , Evgenii Chzhen , Massimiliano Pontil , Alexandre B. Tsybakov

The analysis of gradient descent-type methods typically relies on the Lipschitz continuity of the objective gradient. This generally requires an expensive hyperparameter tuning process to appropriately calibrate a stepsize for a given…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-16 Albert S. Berahas , Lindon Roberts , Fred Roosta

In this paper, we propose a unified view of gradient-based algorithms for stochastic convex composite optimization by extending the concept of estimate sequence introduced by Nesterov. More precisely, we interpret a large class of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-09-07 Andrei Kulunchakov , Julien Mairal

We develop universal gradient methods for Stochastic Convex Optimization (SCO). Our algorithms automatically adapt not only to the oracle's noise but also to the H\"older smoothness of the objective function without a priori knowledge of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-07-12 Anton Rodomanov , Ali Kavis , Yongtao Wu , Kimon Antonakopoulos , Volkan Cevher

This paper aims at achieving a "good" estimator for the gradient of a function on a high-dimensional space. Often such functions are not sensitive in all coordinates and the gradient of the function is almost sparse. We propose a method for…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-07-27 Vivek S. Borkar , Vikranth R. Dwaracherla , Neeraja Sahasrabudhe

We propose new sequential simulation-optimization algorithms for general convex optimization via simulation problems with high-dimensional discrete decision space. The performance of each choice of discrete decision variables is evaluated…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-02-15 Haixiang Zhang , Zeyu Zheng , Javad Lavaei

Understanding and analyzing markets is crucial, yet analytical equilibrium solutions remain largely infeasible. Recent breakthroughs in equilibrium computation rely on zeroth-order policy gradient estimation. These approaches commonly…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-03-17 Nils Kohring , Fabian R. Pieroth , Martin Bichler

Stochastic optimization problems with unknown decision-dependent distributions have attracted increasing attention in recent years due to its importance in applications. Since the gradient of the objective function is inaccessible as a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-30 Yuya Hikima , Akiko Takeda

We provide new gradient-based methods for efficiently solving a broad class of ill-conditioned optimization problems. We consider the problem of minimizing a function $f : \mathbb{R}^d \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ which is implicitly…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-11-08 Jonathan Kelner , Annie Marsden , Vatsal Sharan , Aaron Sidford , Gregory Valiant , Honglin Yuan

This paper investigates a category of constrained fractional optimization problems that emerge in various practical applications. The objective function for this category is characterized by the ratio of a numerator and denominator, both…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-28 Yizun Lin , Jian-Feng Cai , Zhao-Rong Lai , Cheng Li

We develop a new primitive for stochastic optimization: a low-bias, low-cost estimator of the minimizer $x_\star$ of any Lipschitz strongly-convex function. In particular, we use a multilevel Monte-Carlo approach due to Blanchet and Glynn…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-10-29 Hilal Asi , Yair Carmon , Arun Jambulapati , Yujia Jin , Aaron Sidford

In this work, we consider a distributed multi-agent stochastic optimization problem, where each agent holds a local objective function that is smooth and convex, and that is subject to a stochastic process. The goal is for all agents to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-10-12 Elissa Mhanna , Mohamad Assaad

In this paper we propose a variant of the random coordinate descent method for solving linearly constrained convex optimization problems with composite objective functions. If the smooth part of the objective function has Lipschitz…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2013-02-14 Ion Necoara , Andrei Patrascu

First Order Bayesian Optimization (FOBO) is a sample efficient sequential approach to find the global maxima of an expensive-to-evaluate black-box objective function by suitably querying for the function and its gradient evaluations. Such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-21 Utkarsh Prakash , Aryan Chollera , Kushagra Khatwani , Prabuchandran K. J. , Tejas Bodas