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We undertake a precise study of the asymptotic and non-asymptotic properties of stochastic approximation procedures with Polyak-Ruppert averaging for solving a linear system $\bar{A} \theta = \bar{b}$. When the matrix $\bar{A}$ is Hurwitz,…
The ODE method has been a workhorse for algorithm design and analysis since the introduction of the stochastic approximation. It is now understood that convergence theory amounts to establishing robustness of Euler approximations for ODEs,…
We study the asymptotic behavior, uniform-in-time, of a non-linear dynamical system under the combined effects of fast periodic sampling with period $\delta$ and small white noise of size $\varepsilon,\thinspace 0<\varepsilon,\delta \ll 1$.…
This paper concerns quasi-stochastic approximation (QSA) to solve root finding problems commonly found in applications to optimization and reinforcement learning. The general constant gain algorithm may be expressed as the…
We consider linear two-time-scale stochastic approximation algorithms driven by martingale noise. Recent applications in machine learning motivate the need to understand finite-time error rates, but conventional stochastic approximation…
We consider time-inhomogeneous ODEs whose parameters are governed by an underlying ergodic Markov process. When this underlying process is accelerated by a factor $\varepsilon^{-1}$, an averaging phenomenon occurs and the solution of the…
We present for the first time an asymptotic convergence analysis of two time-scale stochastic approximation driven by "controlled" Markov noise. In particular, the faster and slower recursions have non-additive controlled Markov noise…
We show that the complex-valued ODE \begin{equation*} \dot z_t = a_{n+1} z^{n+1} + a_n z^n+\cdots+a_0, \end{equation*} which necessarily has trajectories along which the dynamics blows up in finite time, can be stabilized by the addition of…
There has been remarkable progress over the past decade in establishing finite-sample, non-asymptotic bounds on recovering unknown system parameters from observed system behavior. Surprisingly, however, we show that the current…
Stochastic approximation is a class of algorithms that update a vector iteratively, incrementally, and stochastically, including, e.g., stochastic gradient descent and temporal difference learning. One fundamental challenge in analyzing a…
Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) have recently gained a lot of attention in machine learning. However, the theoretical aspects, e.g., identifiability and asymptotic properties of statistical estimation are still obscure. This paper…
Theory and application of stochastic approximation (SA) have become increasingly relevant due in part to applications in optimization and reinforcement learning. This paper takes a new look at SA with constant step-size $\alpha>0$, defined…
We study stochastic approximation algorithms with Markovian noise and constant step-size $\alpha$. We develop a method based on infinitesimal generator comparisons to study the bias of the algorithm, which is the expected difference between…
This paper provides a Central Limit Theorem (CLT) for a process $\{\theta_n, n\geq 0\}$ satisfying a stochastic approximation (SA) equation of the form $\theta_{n+1} = \theta_n + \gamma_{n+1} H(\theta_n,X_{n+1})$; a CLT for the associated…
We consider stochastic algorithms derived from methods for solving deterministic optimization problems, especially comparison-based algorithms derived from stochastic approximation algorithms with a constant step-size. We develop a…
The article proposes an approach to complete-type and related Lyapunov-Krasovskii functionals that neither requires knowledge of the delay-Lyapunov matrix function nor does it involve linear matrix inequalities. The approach is based on…
We study stochastic approximation procedures for approximately solving a $d$-dimensional linear fixed point equation based on observing a trajectory of length $n$ from an ergodic Markov chain. We first exhibit a non-asymptotic bound of the…
This paper investigates asymptotic behaviors of gradient descent algorithms (particularly accelerated gradient descent and stochastic gradient descent) in the context of stochastic optimization arising in statistics and machine learning…
In this paper we study the asymptotic behavior of stochastic approximation schemes with set-valued drift function and non-additive iterate-dependent Markov noise. We show that a linearly interpolated trajectory of such a recursion is an…
This paper proposes a method for certifying the local asymptotic stability of a given nonlinear Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE) by using Sum-of-Squares (SOS) programming to search for a partially quadratic Lyapunov Function (LF). The…