Related papers: Theoretical Study and Comparison of SPSA and RDSA …

Stochastic approximation (SA) and stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithms are work-horses for modern machine learning algorithms. Their constant stepsize variants are preferred in practice due to fast convergence behavior. However,…

We propose a stochastic approximation (SA) based method with randomization of samples for policy evaluation using the least squares temporal difference (LSTD) algorithm. Our proposed scheme is equivalent to running regular temporal…

We develop a new randomized iterative algorithm---stochastic dual ascent (SDA)---for finding the projection of a given vector onto the solution space of a linear system. The method is dual in nature: with the dual being a non-strongly…

We propose a flexible scenario-based regularized Sample Average Approximation (SBR-SAA) framework for stochastic optimization. This work is motivated by challenges in standard Wasserstein Distributionally Robust Optimization (WDRO), where…

This short tutorial provides an introduction to the Quantum Approximation Optimization Algorithm (QAOA). Specifically, how to use QAOA with the Simultaneous Perturbation Stochastic Approximation (SPSA) algorithm to solve the Max-Cut…

Many machine learning algorithms minimize a regularized risk, and stochastic optimization is widely used for this task. When working with massive data, it is desirable to perform stochastic optimization in parallel. Unfortunately, many…

Adaptive stochastic gradient methods such as AdaGrad have gained popularity in particular for training deep neural networks. The most commonly used and studied variant maintains a diagonal matrix approximation to second order information by…

The classical Method of Successive Approximations (MSA) is an iterative method for solving stochastic control problems and is derived from Pontryagin's optimality principle. It is known that the MSA may fail to converge. Using careful…

Many statistical problems involve mixture models and the need for computationally efficient methods to estimate the mixing distribution has increased dramatically in recent years. Newton [Sankhya Ser. A 64 (2002) 306--322] proposed a fast…

Recently, much progress has been made on particle swarm optimization (PSO). A number of works have been devoted to analyzing the convergence of the underlying algorithms. Nevertheless, in most cases, rather simplified hypotheses are used.…

This paper presents comparison of several stochastic optimization algorithms developed by authors in their previous works for the solution of some problems arising in Civil Engineering. The introduced optimization methods are: the integer…

Stochastic gradient descent is a canonical tool for addressing stochastic optimization problems, and forms the bedrock of modern machine learning and statistics. In this work, we seek to balance the fact that attenuating step-size is…

Stochastic optimization finds a wide range of applications in operations research and management science. However, existing stochastic optimization techniques usually require the information of random samples (e.g., demands in the…

This paper investigates the problem of online statistical inference of model parameters in stochastic optimization problems via the Kiefer-Wolfowitz algorithm with random search directions. We first present the asymptotic distribution for…

The challenge of Out-of-Distribution (OOD) generalization poses a foundational concern for the application of machine learning algorithms to risk-sensitive areas. Inspired by traditional importance weighting and propensity weighting…

General purpose optimization routines such as nlminb, optim (R) or nlmixed (SAS) are frequently used to estimate model parameters in nonstandard distributions. This paper presents Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), as an alternative to many…

We consider constrained optimization problems with a nonsmooth objective function in the form of mathematical expectation. The Sample Average Approximation (SAA) is used to estimate the objective function and variable sample size strategy…

In this paper, we consider multi-stage stochastic optimization problems with convex objectives and conic constraints at each stage. We present a new stochastic first-order method, namely the dynamic stochastic approximation (DSA) algorithm,…

We developed a corporative stochastic approximation (CSA) type algorithm for semi-infinite programming (SIP), where the cut generation problem is solved inexactly. First, we provide general error bounds for inexact CSA. Then, we propose two…

Many randomized approximation algorithms operate by giving a procedure for simulating a random variable $X$ which has mean $\mu$ equal to the target answer, and a relative standard deviation bounded above by a known constant $c$. Examples…