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Stochastic minimax optimization on Riemannian manifolds has recently attracted significant attention due to its broad range of applications, such as robust training of neural networks and robust maximum likelihood estimation. Existing…
This paper introduces a simple formalism for dealing with deterministic, non- deterministic and stochastic cellular automata in an unified and composable manner. This formalism allows for local probabilistic correlations, a feature which is…
In this paper, we propose and analyze a trust-region model-based algorithm for solving unconstrained stochastic optimization problems. Our framework utilizes random models of an objective function $f(x)$, obtained from stochastic…
Stochastic policies (also known as relaxed controls) are widely used in continuous-time reinforcement learning algorithms. However, executing a stochastic policy and evaluating its performance in a continuous-time environment remain open…
We propose a novel reformulation of the stochastic optimal control problem as an approximate inference problem, demonstrating, that such a interpretation leads to new practical methods for the original problem. In particular we characterise…
We revisit the sample average approximation (SAA) approach for non-convex stochastic programming. We show that applying the SAA approach to problems with expected value equality constraints does not necessarily result in asymptotic…
A framework previously introduced in [3] for solving a sequence of stochastic optimization problems with bounded changes in the minimizers is extended and applied to machine learning problems such as regression and classification. The…
In this paper, we propose a stochastic search algorithm for solving general optimization problems with little structure. The algorithm iteratively finds high quality solutions by randomly sampling candidate solutions from a parameterized…
Consider the problem of minimizing the expected value of a (possibly nonconvex) cost function parameterized by a random (vector) variable, when the expectation cannot be computed accurately (e.g., because the statistics of the random…
We revisit random search for stochastic optimization, where only noisy function evaluations are available. We show that the method works under weaker smoothness assumptions than previously considered, and that stronger assumptions enable…
Decision-making problems can be modeled as combinatorial optimization problems with Constraint Programming formalisms such as Constrained Optimization Problems. However, few Constraint Programming formalisms can deal with both optimization…
Many stochastic optimization problems include chance constraints that enforce constraint satisfaction with a specific probability; however, solving an optimization problem with chance constraints assumes that the solver has access to the…
We propose an efficient probabilistic method to solve a deterministic problem -- we present a randomized optimization approach that drastically reduces the enormous computational cost of optimizing designs under many load cases for both…
Stochastic approximation algorithms have been the subject of an enormous body of literature, both theoretical and applied. Recently, Laruelle and Pag\`es (2013) presented a link between the stochastic approximation and response-adaptive…
This paper focuses on stochastic proximal gradient methods for optimizing a smooth non-convex loss function with a non-smooth non-convex regularizer and convex constraints. To the best of our knowledge we present the first non-asymptotic…
We introduce a family of stochastic optimization methods based on the Runge-Kutta-Chebyshev (RKC) schemes. The RKC methods are explicit methods originally designed for solving stiff ordinary differential equations by ensuring that their…
In this paper, we aim to solve the high dimensional stochastic optimal control problem from the view of the stochastic maximum principle via deep learning. By introducing the extended Hamiltonian system which is essentially an FBSDE with a…
Motivated by decentralized sensing and policy evaluation problems, we consider a particular type of distributed stochastic optimization problem over a network, called the online stochastic distributed averaging problem. We design a…
We investigate constrained optimal control problems for linear stochastic dynamical systems evolving in discrete time. We consider minimization of an expected value cost over a finite horizon. Hard constraints are introduced first, and then…
We consider the problem of fitting variational posterior approximations using stochastic optimization methods. The performance of these approximations depends on (1) how well the variational family matches the true posterior…