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Acceleration and momentum are the de facto standard in modern applications of machine learning and optimization, yet the bulk of the work on implicit regularization focuses instead on unaccelerated methods. In this paper, we study the…
We consider two high-order tuners that have been shown to have accelerated performance, one based on Polyak's heavy ball method and another based on Nesterov's acceleration method. We show that parameter estimates are bounded and converge…
Stochastic first-order methods for empirical risk minimization employ gradient approximations based on sampled data in lieu of exact gradients. Such constructions introduce noise into the learning dynamics, which can be corrected through…
Gradient descent is slow to converge for ill-conditioned problems and non-convex problems. An important technique for acceleration is step-size adaptation. The first part of this paper contains a detailed review of step-size adaptation…
Under mild assumptions stochastic gradient methods asymptotically achieve an optimal rate of convergence if the arithmetic mean of all iterates is returned as an approximate optimal solution. However, in the absence of stochastic noise, the…
A variant of consensus based distributed gradient descent (\textbf{DGD}) is studied for finite sums of smooth but possibly non-convex functions. In particular, the local gradient term in the fixed step-size iteration of each agent is…
The graduated optimization approach, also known as the continuation method, is a popular heuristic to solving non-convex problems that has received renewed interest over the last decade. Despite its popularity, very little is known in terms…
Gradient descent-based optimization methods underpin the parameter training of neural networks, and hence comprise a significant component in the impressive test results found in a number of applications. Introducing stochasticity is key to…
Large-scale optimization problems require algorithms both effective and efficient. One such popular and proven algorithm is Stochastic Gradient Descent which uses first-order gradient information to solve these problems. This paper studies…
The learning rate in stochastic gradient methods is a critical hyperparameter that is notoriously costly to tune via standard grid search, especially for training modern large-scale models with billions of parameters. We identify a…
Recent years have seen increased interest in performance guarantees of gradient descent algorithms for non-convex optimization. A number of works have uncovered that gradient noise plays a critical role in the ability of gradient descent…
In this paper, we introduce various mechanisms to obtain accelerated first-order stochastic optimization algorithms when the objective function is convex or strongly convex. Specifically, we extend the Catalyst approach originally designed…
We propose \textit{Meta-Regularization}, a novel approach for the adaptive choice of the learning rate in first-order gradient descent methods. Our approach modifies the objective function by adding a regularization term on the learning…
In large-scale learning algorithms, the momentum term is usually included in the stochastic sub-gradient method to improve the learning speed because it can navigate ravines efficiently to reach a local minimum. However, step-size and…
The theory of integral quadratic constraints (IQCs) allows the certification of exponential convergence of interconnected systems containing nonlinear or uncertain elements. In this work, we adapt the IQC theory to study first-order methods…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a simple and popular method to solve stochastic optimization problems which arise in machine learning. For strongly convex problems, its convergence rate was known to be O(\log(T)/T), by running SGD for…
We consider unconstrained minimization of smooth convex functions. We propose a novel variational perspective using forced Euler-Lagrange equation that allows for studying high-resolution ODEs. Through this, we obtain a faster convergence…
Empirically, it has been observed that adding momentum to Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) accelerates the convergence of the algorithm. However, the literature has been rather pessimistic, even in the case of convex functions, about the…
A very simple first-order algorithm is proposed for solving nonlinear optimization problems with deterministic nonlinear equality constraints. This algorithm adaptively selects steps in the plane tangent to the constraints or steps that…
The work is devoted to the construction of efficient and applicable to real tasks first-order methods of convex optimization, that is, using only values of the target function and its derivatives. Construction uses OGM-G, fast gradient…