Related papers: Improved Analysis and Rates for Variance Reduction…
We introduce two algorithms for nonconvex regularized finite sum minimization, where typical Lipschitz differentiability assumptions are relaxed to the notion of relative smoothness. The first one is a Bregman extension of Finito/MISO,…
We consider distributionally robust optimization (DRO) problems, reformulated as distributionally robust feasibility (DRF) problems, with multiple expectation constraints. We propose a generic stochastic first-order meta-algorithm, where…
When the nonconvex problem is complicated by stochasticity, the sample complexity of stochastic first-order methods may depend linearly on the problem dimension, which is undesirable for large-scale problems. To alleviate this linear…
Optimizing large-scale nonconvex problems, common in deep learning, demands balancing rapid convergence with computational efficiency. First-order (FO) optimizers, which serve as today's baselines, provide fast convergence and good…
Stochastic gradient descent samples uniformly the training set to build an unbiased gradient estimate with a limited number of samples. However, at a given step of the training process, some data are more helpful than others to continue…
In this paper, we propose a simple variant of the original stochastic variance reduction gradient (SVRG), where hereafter we refer to as the variance reduced stochastic gradient descent (VR-SGD). Different from the choices of the snapshot…
We consider decentralized time-varying stochastic optimization problems where each of the functions held by the nodes has a finite sum structure. Such problems can be efficiently solved using variance reduction techniques. Our aim is to…
We consider the problem of training a deep neural network with nonsmooth regularization to retrieve a sparse and efficient sub-structure. Our regularizer is only assumed to be lower semi-continuous and prox-bounded. We combine an adaptive…
Difference of convex (DC) functions cover a broad family of non-convex and possibly non-smooth and non-differentiable functions, and have wide applications in machine learning and statistics. Although deterministic algorithms for DC…
Coordinate descent with random coordinate selection is the current state of the art for many large scale optimization problems. However, greedy selection of the steepest coordinate on smooth problems can yield convergence rates independent…
We provide the first importance sampling variants of variance reduced algorithms for empirical risk minimization with non-convex loss functions. In particular, we analyze non-convex versions of SVRG, SAGA and SARAH. Our methods have the…
Efficient sampling from constraint manifolds, and thereby generating a diverse set of solutions for feasibility problems, is a fundamental challenge. We consider the case where a problem is factored, that is, the underlying nonlinear…
We study finite-sum nonconvex optimization problems, where the objective function is an average of $n$ nonconvex functions. We propose a new stochastic gradient descent algorithm based on nested variance reduction. Compared with…
Dropout has been witnessed with great success in training deep neural networks by independently zeroing out the outputs of neurons at random. It has also received a surge of interest for shallow learning, e.g., logistic regression. However,…
In this dissertation we propose alternative analysis of distributed stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithms that rely on spectral properties of the data covariance. As a consequence we can relate questions pertaining to speedups and…
We study randomized algorithms for constrained optimization, in abstract frameworks that include, in strictly increasing generality: convex programming; LP-type problems; violator spaces; and a setting we introduce, consistent spaces. Such…
We prove local convergence of several notable gradient descent algorithms used in machine learning, for which standard stochastic gradient descent theory does not apply directly. This includes, first, online algorithms for recurrent models…
We consider a statistical inverse learning problem, where we observe the image of a function $f$ through a linear operator $A$ at i.i.d. random design points $X_i$, superposed with an additive noise. The distribution of the design points is…
Stochastic convex optimization algorithms are the most popular way to train machine learning models on large-scale data. Scaling up the training process of these models is crucial, but the most popular algorithm, Stochastic Gradient Descent…
We study infinite-horizon Discounted Markov Decision Processes (DMDPs) under a generative model. Motivated by the Algorithm with Advice framework Mitzenmacher and Vassilvitskii 2022, we propose a novel framework to investigate how a…