Related papers: On the global convergence of randomized coordinate…
We provide larger step-size restrictions for which gradient descent based algorithms (almost surely) avoid strict saddle points. In particular, consider a twice differentiable (non-convex) objective function whose gradient has Lipschitz…
We propose a general theory for studying the \xl{landscape} of nonconvex \xl{optimization} with underlying symmetric structures \tz{for a class of machine learning problems (e.g., low-rank matrix factorization, phase retrieval, and deep…
We present distributed subgradient methods for min-max problems with agreement constraints on a subset of the arguments of both the convex and concave parts. Applications include constrained minimization problems where each constraint is a…
In a real Hilbert space setting, we study the convergence properties of an inexact gradient algorithm featuring both viscous and Hessian driven damping for convex differentiable optimization. In this algorithm, the gradient evaluation can…
We consider unconstrained randomized optimization of convex objective functions. We analyze the Random Pursuit algorithm, which iteratively computes an approximate solution to the optimization problem by repeated optimization over a…
We analyze convergence of gradient-descent methods on Riemannian manifolds. In particular, we study randomization of Riemannian gradient algorithms for minimizing smooth cost functions (of Morse-Bott type). We prove that randomized gradient…
This paper introduces an abstract framework for randomized subspace correction methods for convex optimization, which unifies and generalizes a broad class of existing algorithms, including domain decomposition, multigrid, and block…
Gradient descent (GD) and stochastic gradient descent (SGD) are the workhorses of large-scale machine learning. While classical theory focused on analyzing the performance of these methods in convex optimization problems, the most notable…
Satisfaction of the strict saddle property has become a standard assumption in non-convex optimization, and it ensures that many first-order optimization algorithms will almost always escape saddle points. However, functions exist in…
Non-convex optimization with local search heuristics has been widely used in machine learning, achieving many state-of-art results. It becomes increasingly important to understand why they can work for these NP-hard problems on typical…
Recent years have seen a flurry of activities in designing provably efficient nonconvex procedures for solving statistical estimation problems. Due to the highly nonconvex nature of the empirical loss, state-of-the-art procedures often…
Local search heuristics for non-convex optimizations are popular in applied machine learning. However, in general it is hard to guarantee that such algorithms even converge to a local minimum, due to the existence of complicated saddle…
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 investigate the uniform convergence of subdifferential mappings from empirical risk to population risk in nonsmooth, nonconvex stochastic optimization. This question is key to understanding how empirical stationary points approximate…
Bilevel optimization has been developed for many machine learning tasks with large-scale and high-dimensional data. This paper considers a constrained bilevel optimization problem, where the lower-level optimization problem is convex with…
We study the performance of stochastic first-order methods for finding saddle points of convex-concave functions. A notorious challenge faced by such methods is that the gradients can grow arbitrarily large during optimization, which may…
A generalized conditional gradient method for minimizing the sum of two convex functions, one of them differentiable, is presented. This iterative method relies on two main ingredients: First, the minimization of a partially linearized…
Saddle points provide a hierarchical view of the energy landscape, revealing transition pathways and interconnected basins of attraction, and offering insight into the global structure, metastability, and possible collective mechanisms of…
In this paper, we focus on solving a class of constrained non-convex non-concave saddle point problems in a decentralized manner by a group of nodes in a network. Specifically, we assume that each node has access to a summand of a global…
In this paper we consider the problem of minimizing a convex function using a randomized block coordinate descent method. One of the key steps at each iteration of the algorithm is determining the update to a block of variables. Existing…