Related papers: Vaidya's method for convex stochastic optimization…
Many important machine learning applications amount to solving minimax optimization problems, and in many cases there is no access to the gradient information, but only the function values. In this paper, we focus on such a gradient-free…
One key challenge for solving a general stochastic optimization problem with expectations in the objective and constraint functions using ordinary stochastic iterative methods lies in the infeasibility issue caused by the randomness over…
We consider the fundamental problem in non-convex optimization of efficiently reaching a stationary point. In contrast to the convex case, in the long history of this basic problem, the only known theoretical results on first-order…
In this paper, we proposed a new technique, {\em variance controlled stochastic gradient} (VCSG), to improve the performance of the stochastic variance reduced gradient (SVRG) algorithm. To avoid over-reducing the variance of gradient by…
In this paper, we consider the problem of stochastic optimization, where the objective function is in terms of the expectation of a (possibly non-convex) cost function that is parametrized by a random variable. While the convergence speed…
This paper proposes a novel technique called "successive stochastic smoothing" that optimizes nonsmooth and discontinuous functions while considering various constraints. Our methodology enables local and global optimization, making it a…
We prove convergence of a single time-scale stochastic subgradient method with subgradient averaging for constrained problems with a nonsmooth and nonconvex objective function having the property of generalized differentiability. As a tool…
Stochastic gradient descent is a canonical tool for addressing stochastic optimization problems, and forms the bedrock of modern machine learning and statistics. In this work, we seek to balance the fact that attenuating step-size is…
Bayesian optimization is a sample-efficient method for solving expensive, black-box optimization problems. Stochastic programming concerns optimization under uncertainty where, typically, average performance is the quantity of interest. In…
Optimization models with non-convex constraints arise in many tasks in machine learning, e.g., learning with fairness constraints or Neyman-Pearson classification with non-convex loss. Although many efficient methods have been developed…
Mini-batch algorithms have been proposed as a way to speed-up stochastic convex optimization problems. We study how such algorithms can be improved using accelerated gradient methods. We provide a novel analysis, which shows how standard…
A stochastic-gradient-based interior-point algorithm for minimizing a continuously differentiable objective function (that may be nonconvex) subject to bound constraints is presented, analyzed, and demonstrated through experimental results.…
This paper explores the non-convex composition optimization in the form including inner and outer finite-sum functions with a large number of component functions. This problem arises in some important applications such as nonlinear…
We analyze a simple randomized subgradient method for approximating solutions to stochastic systems of convex functional constraints, the only input to the algorithm being the size of minibatches. By introducing a new notion of what is…
In this paper, we propose a proximal stochasitc gradient algorithm (PSGA) for solving composite optimization problems by incorporating variance reduction techniques and an adaptive step-size strategy. In the PSGA method, the objective…
Non-convex optimization is a critical tool in advancing machine learning, especially for complex models like deep neural networks and support vector machines. Despite challenges such as multiple local minima and saddle points, non-convex…
We present a stochastic descent algorithm for unconstrained optimization that is particularly efficient when the objective function is slow to evaluate and gradients are not easily obtained, as in some PDE-constrained optimization and…
This paper considers a class of constrained stochastic composite optimization problems whose objective function is given by the summation of a differentiable (possibly nonconvex) component, together with a certain non-differentiable (but…
In this paper, we address a manifold constrained nonsmooth optimization problem involving the composition of a weakly convex function and a smooth mapping under the availability of a parametrization of the manifold. To find a stationary…
We are concerned with optimization in a broad sense through the lens of solving variational inequalities (VIs) -- a class of problems that are so general that they cover as particular cases minimization of functions, saddle-point (minimax)…