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We propose a new stochastic optimization framework for empirical risk minimization problems such as those that arise in machine learning. The traditional approaches, such as (mini-batch) stochastic gradient descent (SGD), utilize an…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-02-04 Kenji Kawaguchi , Haihao Lu

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-20 Dongruo Zhou , Pan Xu , Quanquan Gu

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is a cornerstone of large-scale optimization, yet its theoretical behavior under heavy-tailed noise -- common in modern machine learning and reinforcement learning -- remains poorly understood. In this…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-08-08 Ilyas Fatkhullin , Florian Hübler , Guanghui Lan

This paper analyzes the trajectories of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) to help understand the algorithm's convergence properties in non-convex problems. We first show that the sequence of iterates generated by SGD remains bounded and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-06-22 Panayotis Mertikopoulos , Nadav Hallak , Ali Kavis , Volkan Cevher

This paper studies the convergence of clipped stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithms with decision-dependent data distribution. Our setting is motivated by privacy preserving optimization algorithms that interact with performative…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-31 Qiang Li , Michal Yemini , Hoi-To Wai

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) is a workhorse in machine learning, yet its slow convergence can be a computational bottleneck. Variance reduction techniques such as SAG, SVRG and SAGA have been proposed to overcome this weakness,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-02-29 Thomas Hofmann , Aurelien Lucchi , Simon Lacoste-Julien , Brian McWilliams

Stochastic gradient descent with momentum (SGDM) is one of the most widely used optimization algorithms in machine learning. While optimization properties of SGDM have been extensively studied in the literature, it remains insufficiently…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-28 Yunwen Lei , Zimeng Wang , Xiaoming Yuan

While first-order optimization methods such as stochastic gradient descent (SGD) are popular in machine learning (ML), they come with well-known deficiencies, including relatively-slow convergence, sensitivity to the settings of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-02-19 Peng Xu , Farbod Roosta-Khorasani , Michael W. Mahoney

In this paper, we consider solving the distributed optimization problem over a multi-agent network under the communication restricted setting. We study a compressed decentralized stochastic gradient method, termed ``compressed exact…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-10-01 Kun Huang , Shi Pu

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is one of the most widely used techniques for online optimization in machine learning. In this work, we accelerate SGD by adaptively learning how to sample the most useful training examples at each time…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-03-16 Guillaume Bouchard , Théo Trouillon , Julien Perez , Adrien Gaidon

In recent centralized nonconvex distributed learning and federated learning, local methods are one of the promising approaches to reduce communication time. However, existing work has mainly focused on studying first-order optimality…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-13 Tomoya Murata , Taiji Suzuki

We introduce data structures for solving robust regression through stochastic gradient descent (SGD) by sampling gradients with probability proportional to their norm, i.e., importance sampling. Although SGD is widely used for large scale…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-19 Sepideh Mahabadi , David P. Woodruff , Samson Zhou

This paper studies distributed stochastic nonconvex optimization problems with compressed communication and differential privacy, in which each agent aims to minimize the sum of all agents' cost functions by using local compressed…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-24 Antai Xie , Xiaoqiang Ren , Xinlei Yi , Tao Yang , Xiaofan Wang

Nonconvex optimization underlies many modern machine learning and control tasks, where saddle points pose the dominant obstacle to reliable convergence in high-dimensional settings. Escaping these saddle points deterministically using…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-13 Liraz Mudrik , Isaac Kaminer , Sean Kragelund , Abram H. Clark

Gradient dominance property is a condition weaker than strong convexity, yet sufficiently ensures global convergence even in non-convex optimization. This property finds wide applications in machine learning, reinforcement learning (RL),…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-05-30 Jiyuan Tan , Chenyu Xue , Chuwen Zhang , Qi Deng , Dongdong Ge , Yinyu Ye

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is one of the most widely used algorithms for large scale optimization problems. While classical theoretical analysis of SGD for convex problems studies (suffix) \emph{averages} of iterates and obtains…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-05-30 Prateek Jain , Dheeraj Nagaraj , Praneeth Netrapalli

The article discusses distributed gradient-descent algorithms for computing local and global minima in nonconvex optimization. For local optimization, we focus on distributed stochastic gradient descent (D-SGD)--a simple network-based…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-09-17 Brian Swenson , Soummya Kar , H. Vincent Poor , José M. F. Moura , Aaron Jaech

The distributed nonconvex optimization problem of minimizing a global cost function formed by a sum of $n$ local cost functions by using local information exchange is considered. This problem is an important component of many machine…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-01-11 Xinlei Yi , Shengjun Zhang , Tao Yang , Tianyou Chai , Karl H. Johansson

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) with gradient clipping is a powerful technique for enabling differentially private optimization. Although prior works extensively investigated clipping with a constant threshold, private training remains…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-31 Egor Shulgin , Peter Richtárik