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We analyze stochastic gradient descent for optimizing non-convex functions. In many cases for non-convex functions the goal is to find a reasonable local minimum, and the main concern is that gradient updates are trapped in saddle points.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-03-10 Rong Ge , Furong Huang , Chi Jin , Yang Yuan

In this paper, we propose a new technique named \textit{Stochastic Path-Integrated Differential EstimatoR} (SPIDER), which can be used to track many deterministic quantities of interest with significantly reduced computational cost. We…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-10-18 Cong Fang , Chris Junchi Li , Zhouchen Lin , Tong Zhang

The stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method is a widely used approach for solving stochastic optimization problems, but its convergence is typically slow. Existing variance reduction techniques, such as SAGA, improve convergence by…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-21 Fabio Nobile , Matteo Raviola , Nathan Schaeffer

This paper considers decentralized stochastic optimization over a network of $n$ nodes, where each node possesses a smooth non-convex local cost function and the goal of the networked nodes is to find an $\epsilon$-accurate first-order…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-06-15 Ran Xin , Usman A. Khan , Soummya Kar

We propose a reduction for non-convex optimization that can (1) turn an stationary-point finding algorithm into an local-minimum finding one, and (2) replace the Hessian-vector product computations with only gradient computations. It works…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-04-23 Zeyuan Allen-Zhu , Yuanzhi Li

In this paper, we present a new complexity result for the gradient descent method with an appropriately fixed stepsize for minimizing a strongly convex function with locally $\alpha$-H{\"o}lder continuous gradients ($0 < \alpha \leq 1$).…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-07 Xiaojun Chen , C. T. Kelley , Lei Wang

We study local complexity measures for stochastic convex optimization problems, providing a local minimax theory analogous to that of H\'{a}jek and Le Cam for classical statistical problems. We give complementary optimality results,…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-06-05 John Duchi , Feng Ruan

We study the Stochastic Gradient Langevin Dynamics (SGLD) algorithm for non-convex optimization. The algorithm performs stochastic gradient descent, where in each step it injects appropriately scaled Gaussian noise to the update. We analyze…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-04-10 Yuchen Zhang , Percy Liang , Moses Charikar

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is one of the simplest and most popular stochastic optimization methods. While it has already been theoretically studied for decades, the classical analysis usually required non-trivial smoothness…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-01-01 Ohad Shamir , Tong Zhang

In this work, we study the computational complexity of reducing the squared gradient magnitude for smooth minimax optimization problems. First, we present algorithms with accelerated $\mathcal{O}(1/k^2)$ last-iterate rates, faster than the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-06-11 TaeHo Yoon , Ernest K. Ryu

We introduce a hybrid stochastic estimator to design stochastic gradient algorithms for solving stochastic optimization problems. Such a hybrid estimator is a convex combination of two existing biased and unbiased estimators and leads to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-05-16 Quoc Tran-Dinh , Nhan H. Pham , Dzung T. Phan , Lam M. Nguyen

In this paper, we study the minimax optimization problem in the smooth and strongly convex-strongly concave setting when we have access to noisy estimates of gradients. In particular, we first analyze the stochastic Gradient Descent Ascent…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-02-14 Alireza Fallah , Asuman Ozdaglar , Sarath Pattathil

Online minimization of an unknown convex function over the interval $[0,1]$ is considered under first-order stochastic bandit feedback, which returns a random realization of the gradient of the function at each query point. Without knowing…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-02-21 Sattar Vakili , Sudeep Salgia , Qing Zhao

Many modern large-scale machine learning problems benefit from decentralized and stochastic optimization. Recent works have shown that utilizing both decentralized computing and local stochastic gradient estimates can outperform…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-11-06 Haoran Sun , Songtao Lu , Mingyi Hong

In this paper, we consider supervised learning problems such as logistic regression and study the stochastic gradient method with averaging, in the usual stochastic approximation setting where observations are used only once. We show that…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2014-03-18 Francis Bach

Local SGD is a promising approach to overcome the communication overhead in distributed learning by reducing the synchronization frequency among worker nodes. Despite the recent theoretical advances of local SGD in empirical risk…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-01 Yuyang Deng , Mehrdad Mahdavi

We design an algorithm which finds an $\epsilon$-approximate stationary point (with $\|\nabla F(x)\|\le \epsilon$) using $O(\epsilon^{-3})$ stochastic gradient and Hessian-vector products, matching guarantees that were previously available…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-25 Yossi Arjevani , Yair Carmon , John C. Duchi , Dylan J. Foster , Ayush Sekhari , Karthik Sridharan

In this paper, we consider nonconvex minimax optimization, which is gaining prominence in many modern machine learning applications such as GANs. Large-scale edge-based collection of training data in these applications calls for…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-03-10 Pranay Sharma , Rohan Panda , Gauri Joshi , Pramod K. Varshney

Constrained motion planning is a common but challenging problem in robotic manipulation. In recent years, data-driven constrained motion planning algorithms have shown impressive planning speed and success rate. Among them, the latent…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-01-01 Jiawei Zhang , Chengchao Bai , Wei Pan , Tianhang Liu , Jifeng Guo

We consider in this work small random perturbations (of multiplicative noise type) of the gradient flow. We prove that under mild conditions, when the potential function is a Morse function with additional strong saddle condition, the…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-04-29 Jiaojiao Yang , Wenqing Hu , Chris Junchi Li