Related papers: Recent Theoretical Advances in Non-Convex Optimiza…
We introduce a generic scheme to solve nonconvex optimization problems using gradient-based algorithms originally designed for minimizing convex functions. Even though these methods may originally require convexity to operate, the proposed…
Recent applications that arise in machine learning have surged significant interest in solving min-max saddle point games. This problem has been extensively studied in the convex-concave regime for which a global equilibrium solution can be…
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,…
Non-convex optimal control problems occurring in, e.g., water or power systems, typically involve a large number of variables related through nonlinear equality constraints. The ideal goal is to find a globally optimal solution, and…
Non-convex optimization problems are ubiquitous in machine learning, especially in Deep Learning. While such complex problems can often be successfully optimized in practice by using stochastic gradient descent (SGD), theoretical analysis…
Optimization problems with rank constraints arise in many applications, including matrix regression, structured PCA, matrix completion and matrix decomposition problems. An attractive heuristic for solving such problems is to factorize the…
The goal of this tutorial is to introduce key models, algorithms, and open questions related to the use of optimization methods for solving problems arising in machine learning. It is written with an INFORMS audience in mind, specifically…
Many problems in geometric optics or convex geometry can be recast as optimal transport problems: this includes the far-field reflector problem, Alexandrov's curvature prescription problem, etc. A popular way to solve these problems…
Quasar convexity is a condition that allows some first-order methods to efficiently minimize a function even when the optimization landscape is non-convex. Previous works develop near-optimal accelerated algorithms for minimizing this class…
We introduce a generic scheme for accelerating first-order optimization methods in the sense of Nesterov, which builds upon a new analysis of the accelerated proximal point algorithm. Our approach consists of minimizing a convex objective…
Finding an $\epsilon$-stationary point of a nonconvex function with a Lipschitz continuous Hessian is a central problem in optimization. Regularized Newton methods are a classical tool and have been studied extensively, yet they still face…
We introduce a class of first-order methods for smooth constrained optimization that are based on an analogy to non-smooth dynamical systems. Two distinctive features of our approach are that (i) projections or optimizations over the entire…
We study stochastic optimization of nonconvex loss functions, which are typical objectives for training neural networks. We propose stochastic approximation algorithms which optimize a series of regularized, nonlinearized losses on large…
In this paper, we propose two novel non-stationary first-order primal-dual algorithms to solve nonsmooth composite convex optimization problems. Unlike existing primal-dual schemes where the parameters are often fixed, our methods use…
We study fundamental limits of first-order stochastic optimization in a range of nonconvex settings, including L-smooth functions satisfying Quasar-Convexity (QC), Quadratic Growth (QG), and Restricted Secant Inequalities (RSI). While the…
The (global) Lipschitz smoothness condition is crucial in establishing the convergence theory for most optimization methods. Unfortunately, most machine learning and signal processing problems are not Lipschitz smooth. This motivates us to…
We study stochastic second-order methods for solving general non-convex optimization problems. We propose using a special version of momentum to stabilize the stochastic gradient and Hessian estimates in Newton's method. We show that…
High-order methods for convex and nonconvex optimization, particularly $p$th-order Adaptive Regularization Methods (AR$p$), have attracted significant research interest by naturally incorporating high-order Taylor models into adaptive…
In this paper, we provide the universal first-order methods of Composite Optimization with new complexity analysis. It delivers some universal convergence guarantees, which are not linked directly to any parametric problem class. However,…
We introduce new global and local inexact oracle concepts for a wide class of convex functions in composite convex minimization. Such inexact oracles naturally come from primal-dual framework, barrier smoothing, inexact computations of…