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In this note we give a simple proof for the convergence of stochastic gradient (SGD) methods on $\mu$-convex functions under a (milder than standard) $L$-smoothness assumption. We show that for carefully chosen stepsizes SGD converges after…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-24 Sebastian U. Stich

We consider the problem of optimizing the sum of a smooth convex function and a non-smooth convex function using proximal-gradient methods, where an error is present in the calculation of the gradient of the smooth term or in the proximity…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2011-12-02 Mark Schmidt , Nicolas Le Roux , Francis Bach

We propose a stochastic conditional gradient method (CGM) for minimizing convex finite-sum objectives formed as a sum of smooth and non-smooth terms. Existing CGM variants for this template either suffer from slow convergence rates, or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-19 Gideon Dresdner , Maria-Luiza Vladarean , Gunnar Rätsch , Francesco Locatello , Volkan Cevher , Alp Yurtsever

Stochastic algorithms, especially stochastic gradient descent (SGD), have proven to be the go-to methods in data science and machine learning. In recent years, the stochastic proximal point algorithm (SPPA) emerged, and it was shown to be…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-30 Cheik Traoré , Peter Ochs

Stochastic optimization via Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is a fundamental problem in statistics and optimization. This paper revisits Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) for strongly convex objectives, establishing tight, uniform-in-time…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-19 Kang Chen , Yasong Feng , Tianyu Wang

We consider the problem of unconstrained minimization of finite sums of functions. We propose a simple, yet, practical way to incorporate variance reduction techniques into SignSGD, guaranteeing convergence that is similar to the full sign…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-05-23 Evgenii Chzhen , Sholom Schechtman

Gradient Smoothing is an efficient approach to reducing noise in gradient-based model explanation method. SmoothGrad adds Gaussian noise to mitigate much of these noise. However, the crucial hyper-parameter in this method, the variance…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-23 Linjiang Zhou , Chao Ma , Zepeng Wang , Libing Wu , Xiaochuan Shi

In this paper, we examine the convergence of mirror descent in a class of stochastic optimization problems that are not necessarily convex (or even quasi-convex), and which we call variationally coherent. Since the standard technique of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-07-17 Zhengyuan Zhou , Panayotis Mertikopoulos , Nicholas Bambos , Stephen Boyd , Peter Glynn

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD), which dates back to the 1950s, is one of the most popular and effective approaches for performing stochastic optimization. Research on SGD resurged recently in machine learning for optimizing convex loss…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-24 Jie Chen , Ronny Luss

In this paper, we propose the approximate Bregman proximal gradient algorithm (ABPG) for solving composite nonconvex optimization problems. ABPG employs a new distance that approximates the Bregman distance, making the subproblem of ABPG…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-11-25 Shota Takahashi , Akiko Takeda

We present an algorithm for minimizing a sum of functions that combines the computational efficiency of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with the second order curvature information leveraged by quasi-Newton methods. We unify these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-12-02 Jascha Sohl-Dickstein , Ben Poole , Surya Ganguli

In this paper we address the convergence of stochastic approximation when the functions to be minimized are not convex and nonsmooth. We show that the "mean-limit" approach to the convergence which leads, for smooth problems, to the ODE…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-05-08 Szymon Majewski , Błażej Miasojedow , Eric Moulines

In this paper, we provide a simple convergence analysis of proximal gradient algorithm with Bregman distance, which provides a tighter bound than existing result. In particular, for the problem of minimizing a class of convex objective…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-12-19 Yi Zhou , Yingbin Liang , Lixin Shen

A popular approach to minimize a finite-sum of convex functions is stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and its variants. Fundamental research questions associated with SGD include: (i) To find a lower bound on the number of times that the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-08-16 Nuozhou Wang , Shuzhong Zhang

We study the Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) method in nonconvex optimization problems from the point of view of approximating diffusion processes. We prove rigorously that the diffusion process can approximate the SGD algorithm weakly…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-03-06 Wenqing Hu , Chris Junchi Li , Lei Li , Jian-Guo Liu

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and its variants are widely used and highly effective optimization methods in machine learning, especially for neural network training. By using a single datum or a small subset of the data, selected…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2026-01-21 Bangti Jin , Zeljko Kereta , Yuxin Xia

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) has been a go-to algorithm for nonconvex stochastic optimization problems arising in machine learning. Its theory however often requires a strong framework to guarantee convergence properties. We hereby…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-03-11 Azar Louzi

In machine learning, stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is widely deployed to train models using highly non-convex objectives with equally complex noise models. Unfortunately, SGD theory often makes restrictive assumptions that fail to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-11 Vivak Patel , Shushu Zhang , Bowen Tian

We study nonconvex finite-sum problems and analyze stochastic variance reduced gradient (SVRG) methods for them. SVRG and related methods have recently surged into prominence for convex optimization given their edge over stochastic gradient…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-04-06 Sashank J. Reddi , Ahmed Hefny , Suvrit Sra , Barnabas Poczos , Alex Smola

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…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-20 Laurent Condat , Elnur Gasanov , Peter Richtárik