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Related papers: Imaginary Zeroth-Order Optimization

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In derivative-free and blackbox optimization, the objective function is often evaluated through the execution of a computer program seen as a blackbox. It can be noisy, in the sense that its outputs are contaminated by random errors.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-11-15 Stéphane Alarie , Charles Audet , Pierre-Yves Bouchet , Sébastien Le Digabel

Majorization-minimization algorithms consist of successively minimizing a sequence of upper bounds of the objective function. These upper bounds are tight at the current estimate, and each iteration monotonically drives the objective…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-02-03 Julien Mairal

We present a novel gradient-free algorithm to solve a convex stochastic optimization problem, such as those encountered in medicine, physics, and machine learning (e.g., adversarial multi-armed bandit problem), where the objective function…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-11-22 Georgii Bychkov , Darina Dvinskikh , Anastasia Antsiferova , Alexander Gasnikov , Aleksandr Lobanov

This paper considers zeroth-order optimization for stochastic convex minimization problem. We propose a parameter-free stochastic zeroth-order method (POEM) by introducing a step-size scheme based on the distance over finite difference and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-06 Kunjie Ren , Luo Luo

We propose a new framework for analyzing zeroth-order optimization (ZOO) from the perspective of \emph{oblivious randomized sketching}.In this framework, commonly used gradient estimators in ZOO-such as finite difference (FD) and random…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-14 Haishan Ye , Xiangyu Chang , Xi Chen

Many recent studies on first-order methods (FOMs) focus on \emph{composite non-convex non-smooth} optimization with linear and/or nonlinear function constraints. Upper (or worst-case) complexity bounds have been established for these…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-14 Wei Liu , Qihang Lin , Yangyang Xu

We introduce a new zeroth-order algorithm for private stochastic optimization on nonconvex and nonsmooth objectives. Given a dataset of size $M$, our algorithm ensures $(\alpha,\alpha\rho^2/2)$-R\'enyi differential privacy and finds a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-07-01 Qinzi Zhang , Hoang Tran , Ashok Cutkosky

Saddle-point problems have recently gained increased attention from the machine learning community, mainly due to applications in training Generative Adversarial Networks using stochastic gradients. At the same time, in some applications…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-09-07 Abdurakhmon Sadiev , Aleksandr Beznosikov , Pavel Dvurechensky , Alexander Gasnikov

This work considers stochastic optimization problems in which the objective function values can only be computed by a blackbox corrupted by some random noise following an unknown distribution. The proposed method is based on sequential…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-08-15 Charles Audet , Jean Bigeon , Romain Couderc , Michael Kokkolaras

Zeroth-order optimizers have recently emerged as a practical approach for fine-tuning large language models (LLMs), significantly reducing GPU memory consumption compared to traditional first-order methods. Yet, existing zeroth-order…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-02 Kairun Zhang , Haoyu Li , Yanjun Zhao , Yifan Sun , Huan Zhang

The diverse world of machine learning applications has given rise to a plethora of algorithms and optimization methods, finely tuned to the specific regression or classification task at hand. We reduce the complexity of algorithm design for…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-05-23 Zeyuan Allen-Zhu , Elad Hazan

We prove lower bounds for higher-order methods in smooth non-convex finite-sum optimization. Our contribution is threefold: We first show that a deterministic algorithm cannot profit from the finite-sum structure of the objective, and that…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-07-05 Nicolas Emmenegger , Rasmus Kyng , Ahad N. Zehmakan

Frequently, the burgeoning field of black-box optimization encounters challenges due to a limited understanding of the mechanisms of the objective function. To address such problems, in this work we focus on the deterministic concept of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-30 Aleksandr Lobanov , Alexander Gasnikov , Andrei Krasnov

An Adagrad-inspired class of algorithms for smooth unconstrained optimization is presented in which the objective function is never evaluated and yet the gradient norms decrease at least as fast as $\calO(1/\sqrt{k+1})$ while second-order…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-02-16 S. Gratton , Ph. L. Toint

In this paper, we propose a class of penalty methods with stochastic approximation for solving stochastic nonlinear programming problems. We assume that only noisy gradients or function values of the objective function are available via…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-05-20 Xiao Wang , Shiqian Ma , Ya-xiang Yuan

Modern large-scale statistical models require to estimate thousands to millions of parameters. This is often accomplished by iterative algorithms such as gradient descent, projected gradient descent or their accelerated versions. What are…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-03-04 Michael Celentano , Andrea Montanari , Yuchen Wu

We study first-order methods (FOMs) for solving \emph{composite nonconvex nonsmooth} optimization with linear constraints. Recently, the lower complexity bounds of FOMs on finding an ($\varepsilon,\varepsilon$)-KKT point of the considered…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-01 Wei Liu , Qihang Lin , Yangyang Xu

This paper presents a novel numerical optimisation method for infinite dimensional optimisation. The functional optimisation makes minimal assumptions about the functional and without any specific knowledge on the derivative of the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-11-18 Muhammad F. Kasim , Peter A. Norreys

We introduce a new approach to develop stochastic optimization algorithms for a class of stochastic composite and possibly nonconvex optimization problems. The main idea is to combine two stochastic estimators to create a new hybrid one. We…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-05-05 Quoc Tran-Dinh , Nhan H. Pham , Dzung T. Phan , Lam M. Nguyen

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…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-11 Serge Gratton , Philippe L. Toint