Related papers: Constrained stochastic blackbox optimization using…
This paper considers a class of constrained stochastic composite optimization problems whose objective function is given by the summation of a differentiable (possibly nonconvex) component, together with a certain non-differentiable (but…
The stochastic subgradient method is a widely-used algorithm for solving large-scale optimization problems arising in machine learning. Often these problems are neither smooth nor convex. Recently, Davis et al. [1-2] characterized the…
Many real-time systems require the optimization of discrete variables. Black-box optimization (BBO) algorithms and multi-armed bandit (MAB) algorithms perform optimization by repeatedly taking actions and observing the corresponding instant…
Real-world problems often involve the optimization of several objectives under multiple constraints. An example is the hyper-parameter tuning problem of machine learning algorithms. In particular, the minimization of the estimation of the…
In this work, we consider multiobjective optimization problems with both bound constraints on the variables and general nonlinear constraints, where objective and constraint function values can only be obtained by querying a black box.…
In the machine learning algorithms, the choice of the hyperparameter is often an art more than a science, requiring labor-intensive search with expert experience. Therefore, automation on hyperparameter optimization to exclude human…
Nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization problems are frequently encountered in much of statistics, business, science and engineering, but they are not yet widely recognized as a technology in the sense of scalability. A reason for this…
Multi-time-scale stochastic approximation is an iterative algorithm for finding the fixed point of a set of $N$ coupled operators given their noisy samples. It has been observed that due to the coupling between the decision variables and…
We propose a novel constraint-handling technique for the covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES). The proposed technique is aimed at solving explicitly constrained black-box continuous optimization problems, in which the…
Stochastic gradient descent type methods are ubiquitous in machine learning, but they are only applicable to the optimization of differentiable functions. Proximal algorithms are more general and applicable to nonsmooth functions. We…
A step-search sequential quadratic programming method is proposed for solving nonlinear equality constrained stochastic optimization problems. It is assumed that constraint function values and derivatives are available, but only stochastic…
The emergence of Big Data has enabled new research perspectives in the discrete choice community. While the techniques to estimate Machine Learning models on a massive amount of data are well established, these have not yet been fully…
We consider stochastic optimization problems involving an expected value of a nonlinear function of a base random vector and a conditional expectation of another function depending on the base random vector, a dependent random vector, and…
High-dimensional classification has become an increasingly important problem. In this paper we propose a "Multivariate Adaptive Stochastic Search" (MASS) approach which first reduces the dimension of the data space and then applies a…
An inexact accelerated stochastic Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (AS-ADMM) scheme is developed for solving structured separable convex optimization problems with linear constraints. The objective function is the sum of a…
We consider a step search method for continuous optimization under a stochastic setting where the function values and gradients are available only through inexact probabilistic zeroth- and first-order oracles. Unlike the stochastic gradient…
This paper addresses risk averse constrained optimization problems where the objective and constraint functions can only be computed by a blackbox subject to unknown uncertainties. To handle mixed aleatory/epistemic uncertainties, the…
We address the optimal covariance steering (OCS) problem for stochastic discrete linear systems with additive Gaussian noise under state chance constraints and input hard constraints. Because the system state can be unbounded due to the…
Majorization-minimization algorithms consist of iteratively minimizing a majorizing surrogate of an objective function. Because of its simplicity and its wide applicability, this principle has been very popular in statistics and in signal…
In this paper we consider the unconstrained minimization problem of a smooth function in ${\mathbb{R}}^n$ in a setting where only function evaluations are possible. We design a novel randomized derivative-free algorithm --- the stochastic…