Related papers: A framework for bilevel optimization that enables …
Two-stage stochastic programming is a popular framework for optimization under uncertainty, where decision variables are split between first-stage decisions, and second-stage (or recourse) decisions, with the latter being adjusted after…
The analysis in Part I revealed interesting properties for subgradient learning algorithms in the context of stochastic optimization when gradient noise is present. These algorithms are used when the risk functions are non-smooth and…
We propose a remarkably general variance-reduced method suitable for solving regularized empirical risk minimization problems with either a large number of training examples, or a large model dimension, or both. In special cases, our method…
This paper considers convex optimization problems where nodes of a network have access to summands of a global objective. Each of these local objectives is further assumed to be an average of a finite set of functions. The motivation for…
Bilevel optimization problems arise in many applications where decisions must account for the optimal response of another system, such as in game-theoretic settings. However, these problems are notoriously challenging, as even linear…
In this paper, we propose the Bi-Sub-Gradient (Bi-SG) method, which is a generalization of the classical sub-gradient method to the setting of convex bi-level optimization problems. This is a first-order method that is very easy to…
We study a class of nonconvex nonsmooth optimization problems in which the objective is a sum of two functions: One function is the average of a large number of differentiable functions, while the other function is proper, lower…
Although application examples of multilevel optimization have already been discussed since the 1990s, the development of solution methods was almost limited to bilevel cases due to the difficulty of the problem. In recent years, in machine…
Gradient-based Bi-Level Optimization (BLO) methods have been widely applied to handle modern learning tasks. However, most existing strategies are theoretically designed based on restrictive assumptions (e.g., convexity of the lower-level…
We propose an algorithmic framework, that employs active subspace techniques, for scalable global optimization of functions with low effective dimension (also referred to as low-rank functions). This proposal replaces the original…
Stochastic Gradient (SG) is the defacto iterative technique to solve stochastic optimization (SO) problems with a smooth (non-convex) objective $f$ and a stochastic first-order oracle. SG's attractiveness is due in part to its simplicity of…
We introduce contextual stochastic bilevel optimization (CSBO) -- a stochastic bilevel optimization framework with the lower-level problem minimizing an expectation conditioned on some contextual information and the upper-level decision…
Bilevel optimization problems embed the optimality of a subproblem as a constraint of another optimization problem. We introduce the concept of near-optimality robustness for bilevel optimization, protecting the upper-level solution…
Bilevel optimization has gained significant attention in recent years due to its broad applications in machine learning. This paper focuses on bilevel optimization in decentralized networks and proposes a novel single-loop algorithm for…
This paper proposes AB-SAGA, a first-order distributed stochastic optimization method to minimize a finite-sum of smooth and strongly convex functions distributed over an arbitrary directed graph. AB-SAGA removes the uncertainty caused by…
This paper studies simple bilevel problems, where a convex upper-level function is minimized over the optimal solutions of a convex lower-level problem. We first show the fundamental difficulty of simple bilevel problems, that the…
Block coordinate descent methods and stochastic subgradient methods have been extensively studied in optimization and machine learning. By combining randomized block sampling with stochastic subgradient methods based on dual averaging, we…
Hierarchical optimization refers to problems with interdependent decision variables and objectives, such as minimax and bilevel formulations. While various algorithms have been proposed, existing methods and analyses lack adaptivity in…
In this paper, we study and analyze zeroth-order stochastic approximation algorithms for solving bilvel problems, when neither the upper/lower objective values, nor their unbiased gradient estimates are available. In particular, exploiting…
Recently, flat-minima optimizers, which seek to find parameters in low-loss neighborhoods, have been shown to improve a neural network's generalization performance over stochastic and adaptive gradient-based optimizers. Two methods have…