Related papers: The Barycenter Method for Direct Optimization: an …
In this paper, we propose a proximal gradient method and an accelerated proximal gradient method for solving composite optimization problems, where the objective function is the sum of a smooth and a convex, possibly nonsmooth, function. We…
A robust clustering method for probabilities in Wasserstein space is introduced. This new "trimmed $k$-barycenters" approach relies on recent results on barycenters in Wasserstein space that allow intensive computation, as required by…
The graduated optimization approach, also known as the continuation method, is a popular heuristic to solving non-convex problems that has received renewed interest over the last decade. Despite its popularity, very little is known in terms…
This paper presents and investigates an inexact proximal gradient method for solving composite convex optimization problems characterized by an objective function composed of a sum of a full-domain differentiable convex function and a…
In this study, we consider an optimization problem with uncertainty dependent on decision variables, which has recently attracted attention due to its importance in machine learning and pricing applications. In this problem, the gradient of…
An efficient method for computing solutions to the Optimal Transportation (OT) problem with a wide class of cost functions is presented. The standard linear programming (LP) discretization of the continuous problem becomes intractible for…
We present an optimal gradient method for smooth strongly convex optimization. The method is optimal in the sense that its worst-case bound on the distance to an optimal point exactly matches the lower bound on the oracle complexity for the…
Given a discrete probability measure supported on $N$ atoms and a set of $n$ real-valued functions, there exists a probability measure that is supported on a subset of $n+1$ of the original $N$ atoms and has the same mean when integrated…
This article overviews how gradient flows, and discretizations thereof, are useful to design and analyze optimization and sampling algorithms. The interplay between optimization, sampling, and gradient flows is an active research area; our…
A piecewise constant Mayer cost function is used to model optimal control problems in which the state space is partitioned into several regions, each having its own Mayer cost value. In such a context, the standard numerical methods used in…
We study derivative-free methods for policy optimization over the class of linear policies. We focus on characterizing the convergence rate of these methods when applied to linear-quadratic systems, and study various settings of driving…
This paper studies the benefits of pressure-robust discretizations in the scope of optimal control of incompressible flows. Gradient forces that may appear in the data can have a negative impact on the accuracy of state and control and can…
We develop a class of barycenter problems based on mean field control problems in three dimensions with associated reactive-diffusion systems of unnormalized multi-species densities. This problem is the generalization of the Wasserstein…
In this paper we consider bound-constrained mixed-integer optimization problems where the objective function is differentiable w.r.t.\ the continuous variables for every configuration of the integer variables. We mainly suggest to exploit…
Bayesian models often involve a small set of hyperparameters determined by maximizing the marginal likelihood. Bayesian optimization is a popular iterative method where a Gaussian process posterior of the underlying function is sequentially…
Inverse problems are ubiquitous because they formalize the integration of data with mathematical models. In many scientific applications the forward model is expensive to evaluate, and adjoint computations are difficult to employ; in this…
In this paper, we analyze several methods for approximating gradients of noisy functions using only function values. These methods include finite differences, linear interpolation, Gaussian smoothing and smoothing on a sphere. The methods…
There are many approaches for training decision trees. This work introduces a novel gradient-based method for constructing decision trees that optimize arbitrary differentiable loss functions, overcoming the limitations of heuristic…
We present a multilevel stochastic gradient descent method for the optimal control of systems governed by partial differential equations under uncertain input data. The gradient descent method used to find the optimal control leverages a…
The Wasserstein barycenter extends the Euclidean mean to the space of probability measures by minimizing the weighted sum of squared 2-Wasserstein distances. We develop a free-support algorithm for computing Wasserstein barycenters that…