Related papers: The Stochastic Boolean Function Evaluation Problem…
For the problem of maximizing a monotone, submodular function with respect to a cardinality constraint $k$ on a ground set of size $n$, we provide an algorithm that achieves the state-of-the-art in both its empirical performance and its…
This paper proposes a new algorithm -- the \underline{S}ingle-timescale Do\underline{u}ble-momentum \underline{St}ochastic \underline{A}pprox\underline{i}matio\underline{n} (SUSTAIN) -- for tackling stochastic unconstrained bilevel…
We analyze the sketching approximability of constraint satisfaction problems on Boolean domains, where the constraints are balanced linear threshold functions applied to literals. In~particular, we explore the approximability of…
When measuring the value of a function to be minimized is not only expensive but also with noise, the popular simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation (SPSA) algorithm requires only two function values in each iteration. In this…
Submodular functions are set functions mapping every subset of some ground set of size $n$ into the real numbers and satisfying the diminishing returns property. Submodular minimization is an important field in discrete optimization theory…
Motivated by the need for, and growing interest in, modeling uncertainty in data, we introduce and study {\em stochastic minimum-norm optimization}. We have an underlying combinatorial optimization problem where the costs involved are {\em…
Stochastic projection algorithms for solving convex feasibility problems (CFPs) have attracted considerable attention due to their broad applicability. In this paper, we propose a unified stochastic bilevel reformulation for possibly…
We extend the work of Narasimhan and Bilmes [30] for minimizing set functions representable as a dierence between submodular functions. Similar to [30], our new algorithms are guaranteed to monotonically reduce the objective function at…
In this paper, we study smooth stochastic multi-level composition optimization problems, where the objective function is a nested composition of $T$ functions. We assume access to noisy evaluations of the functions and their gradients,…
In submodular $k$-partition, the input is a non-negative submodular function $f$ defined over a finite ground set $V$ (given by an evaluation oracle) along with a positive integer $k$ and the goal is to find a partition of the ground set…
$ $In many optimization problems, a feasible solution induces a multi-dimensional cost vector. For example, in load-balancing a schedule induces a load vector across the machines. In $k$-clustering, opening $k$ facilities induces an…
The {\em Total Influence} ({\em Average Sensitivity) of a discrete function is one of its fundamental measures. We study the problem of approximating the total influence of a monotone Boolean function \ifnum\plusminus=1 $f: \{\pm1\}^n…
This paper studies function approximation in Gaussian Sobolev spaces over the real line and measures the error in a Gaussian-weighted $L^p$-norm. We construct two linear approximation algorithms using $n$ function evaluations that achieve…
In the area of query complexity of Boolean functions, the most widely studied cost measure of an algorithm is the worst-case number of queries made by it on an input. Motivated by the most natural cost measure studied in online algorithms,…
We consider the following class of submodular k-multiway partitioning problems: (Sub-$k$-MP) $\min \sum_{i=1}^k f(S_i): S_1 \uplus S_2 \uplus \cdots \uplus S_k = V \mbox{ and } S_i \neq \emptyset \mbox{ for all }i\in [k]$. Here $f$ is a…
We consider the problem of sketching set valuation functions, defined as the expectation of a valuation function applied to independent random item values. For valuation functions that are monotone and either subadditive or submodular, and…
In this work, we give a new parallel algorithm for the problem of maximizing a non-monotone diminishing returns submodular function subject to a cardinality constraint. For any desired accuracy $\epsilon$, our algorithm achieves a $1/e -…
In this paper, we study stochastic submodular maximization problems with general matroid constraints, that naturally arise in online learning, team formation, facility location, influence maximization, active learning and sensing objective…
We resolve a long-standing open question, about the existence of a constant-factor approximation algorithm for the average-case \textsc{Decision Tree} problem with uniform probability distribution over the hypotheses. We answer the question…
A pseudo-Boolean function is a real-valued function $f(x)=f(x_1,x_2,\ldots,x_n)$ of $n$ binary variables; that is, a mapping from $\{0,1\}^n$ to $\mathbb{R}$. For a pseudo-Boolean function $f(x)$ on $\{0,1\}^n$, we say that $g(x,y)$ is a…