Related papers: Adaptive Importance Sampling for Finite-Sum Optimi…
We introduce the technique of adaptive discretization to design an efficient model-based episodic reinforcement learning algorithm in large (potentially continuous) state-action spaces. Our algorithm is based on optimistic one-step value…
The alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is a powerful optimization solver in machine learning. Recently, stochastic ADMM has been integrated with variance reduction methods for stochastic gradient, leading to SAG-ADMM and…
Online Convex Optimization plays a key role in large scale machine learning. Early approaches to this problem were conservative, in which the main focus was protection against the worst case scenario. But recently several algorithms have…
We propose an adaptive variance-reduction method, called AdaSpider, for minimization of $L$-smooth, non-convex functions with a finite-sum structure. In essence, AdaSpider combines an AdaGrad-inspired [Duchi et al., 2011, McMahan &…
We present an iterative framework to improve the amortized approximations of posterior distributions in the context of Bayesian inverse problems, which is inspired by loop-unrolled gradient descent methods and is theoretically grounded in…
Adaptive gradient-based optimization methods such as \textsc{Adagrad}, \textsc{Rmsprop}, and \textsc{Adam} are widely used in solving large-scale machine learning problems including deep learning. A number of schemes have been proposed in…
In Analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion, signal decimation has been proven to greatly improve the efficiency of data storage while maintaining high accuracy. When one couples signal decimation with the $\Sigma\Delta$ quantization scheme, the…
Steerable networks, which process data with intrinsic symmetries, often use Fourier-based nonlinearities that require sampling from the entire group, leading to a need for discretization in continuous groups. As the number of samples…
We propose an algorithmic framework, that employs active subspace techniques, for scalable global optimization of functions with low effective dimension (also referred to as low-rank functions). This proposal replaces the original…
To backpropagate the gradients through stochastic binary layers, we propose the augment-REINFORCE-merge (ARM) estimator that is unbiased, exhibits low variance, and has low computational complexity. Exploiting variable augmentation,…
Stochastic approximation is one of the effective approach to deal with the large-scale machine learning problems and the recent research has focused on reduction of variance, caused by the noisy approximations of the gradients. In this…
In this paper, we study sequential decision-making for maximizing the Sharpe ratio (SR) in a stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) setting. Unlike standard bandit formulations that maximize cumulative reward, SR optimization requires…
This paper introduces a new problem-dependent regret measure for online convex optimization with smooth losses. The notion, which we call the $G^\star$ regret, depends on the cumulative squared gradient norm evaluated at the decision in…
Vanilla gradient methods are often highly sensitive to the choice of stepsize, which typically requires manual tuning. Adaptive methods alleviate this issue and have therefore become widely used. Among them, AdaGrad has been particularly…
Establishing a fast rate of convergence for optimization methods is crucial to their applicability in practice. With the increasing popularity of deep learning over the past decade, stochastic gradient descent and its adaptive variants…
The Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) has been studied for years. The traditional ADMM algorithm needs to compute, at each iteration, an (empirical) expected loss function on all training examples, resulting in a…
Like many optimization algorithms, Stochastic Variational Inference (SVI) is sensitive to the choice of the learning rate. If the learning rate is too small, the optimization process may be slow, and the algorithm might get stuck in local…
This work presents the first finite-time analysis for the last-iterate convergence of average-reward $Q$-learning with an asynchronous implementation. A key feature of the algorithm we study is the use of adaptive stepsizes, which serve as…
A framework is introduced for sequentially solving convex stochastic minimization problems, where the objective functions change slowly, in the sense that the distance between successive minimizers is bounded. The minimization problems are…
A pruning-aware adaptive gradient method is proposed which classifies the variables in two sets before updating them using different strategies. This technique extends the ``relevant/irrelevant" approach of Ding (2019) and Zimmer et al.…