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We consider minimization of functions that are compositions of convex or prox-regular functions (possibly extended-valued) with smooth vector functions. A wide variety of important optimization problems fall into this framework. We describe…
A linear functional of an object from a convex symmetric set can be optimally estimated, in a worst-case sense, by a linear functional of observations made on the object. This well-known fact is extended here to a nonlinear setting: other…
Submodular continuous functions are a category of (generally) non-convex/non-concave functions with a wide spectrum of applications. We characterize these functions and demonstrate that they can be maximized efficiently with approximation…
This paper addresses the optimization problem of minimizing non-convex continuous functions, which is relevant in the context of high-dimensional machine learning applications characterized by over-parametrization. We analyze a randomized…
We systematically study the local single-valuedness of the Bregman proximal mapping and local smoothness of the Bregman--Moreau envelope of a nonconvex function under relative prox-regularity - an extension of prox-regularity - which was…
Optimization on Riemannian manifolds widely arises in eigenvalue computation, density functional theory, Bose-Einstein condensates, low rank nearest correlation, image registration, and signal processing, etc. We propose an adaptive…
We provide three new proofs of the strong concavity of the dual function of some convex optimization problems. For problems with nonlinear constraints, we show that the the assumption of strong convexity of the objective cannot be weakened…
A function is exponentially concave if its exponential is concave. We consider exponentially concave functions on the unit simplex. In a previous paper we showed that gradient maps of exponentially concave functions provide solutions to a…
We study optimization over Riemannian embedded submanifolds, where the objective function is relatively smooth in the ambient Euclidean space. Such problems have broad applications but are still largely unexplored. We introduce two…
The problem of minimizing convex functionals of probability distributions is solved under the assumption that the density of every distribution is bounded from above and below. A system of sufficient and necessary first-order optimality…
Submodular function minimization is well studied, and existing algorithms solve it exactly or up to arbitrary accuracy. However, in many applications, such as structured sparse learning or batch Bayesian optimization, the objective function…
In this work, we consider constrained stochastic optimization problems under hidden convexity, i.e., those that admit a convex reformulation via non-linear (but invertible) map $c(\cdot)$. A number of non-convex problems ranging from…
In this paper we build provably near-optimal, in the minimax sense, estimates of linear forms and, more generally, "$N$-convex functionals" (the simplest example being the maximum of several fractional-linear functions) of unknown "signal"…
Most approximation methods in high dimensions exploit smoothness of the function being approximated. These methods provide poor convergence results for non-smooth functions with kinks. For example, such kinks can arise in the uncertainty…
We discuss non-Euclidean deterministic and stochastic algorithms for optimization problems with strongly and uniformly convex objectives. We provide accuracy bounds for the performance of these algorithms and design methods which are…
We consider the problem of minimizing the sum of two convex functions. One of those functions has Lipschitz-continuous gradients, and can be accessed via stochastic oracles, whereas the other is "simple". We provide a Bregman-type algorithm…
This paper considers the problem of smoothing convex functions and sets, seeking the nearest smooth convex function or set to a given one. For convex cones and sublinear functions, a full characterization of the set of all optimal…
We study the min-max optimization problem where each function contributing to the max operation is strongly-convex and smooth with bounded gradient in the search domain. By smoothing the max operator, we show the ability to achieve an…
We extend the standard notion of self-concordance to non-convex optimization and develop a family of second-order algorithms with global convergence guarantees. In particular, two function classes -- \textit{weakly self-concordant}…
This work builds on our recent work on a distributed optimization algorithm for graphs with directed unreliable communications. We show its linear convergence when we take either the proximal of each function or an affine minorant for when…