Related papers: Formalization of a Stochastic Approximation Theore…
Although stochastic approximation learning methods have been widely used in the machine learning literature for over 50 years, formal theoretical analyses of specific machine learning algorithms are less common because stochastic…
The need for parameter estimation with massive datasets has reinvigorated interest in stochastic optimization and iterative estimation procedures. Stochastic approximations are at the forefront of this recent development as they yield…
The goal of this paper is to debunk and dispel the magic behind black-box optimizers and stochastic optimizers. It aims to build a solid foundation on how and why the techniques work. This manuscript crystallizes this knowledge by deriving…
The Robbins-Monro stochastic approximation algorithm is a foundation of many algorithmic frameworks for reinforcement learning (RL), and often an efficient approach to solving (or approximating the solution to) complex optimal control…
We analyze the behavior of stochastic approximation algorithms where iterates, in expectation, progress towards an objective at each step. When progress is proportional to the step size of the algorithm, we prove exponential concentration…
Stochastic Approximation (SA) is a classical algorithm that has had since the early days a huge impact on signal processing, and nowadays on machine learning, due to the necessity to deal with a large amount of data observed with…
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…
The theory of stochastic approximations form the theoretical foundation for studying convergence properties of many popular recursive learning algorithms in statistics, machine learning and statistical physics. Large deviations for…
This paper studies a method, which has been proposed in the Physics literature by [8, 7, 10], for estimating the quasi-stationary distribution. In contrast to existing methods in eigenvector estimation, the method eliminates the need for…
We study the Robbins-Monro stochastic approximation algorithm with projections on a hyperrectangle and prove its convergence. This work fills a gap in the convergence proof of the classic book by Kushner and Yin. Using the ODE method, we…
In this paper, a distributed stochastic approximation algorithm is studied. Applications of such algorithms include decentralized estimation, optimization, control or computing. The algorithm consists in two steps: a local step, where each…
A succesful method to describe the asymptotic behavior of a discrete time stochastic process governed by some recursive formula is to relate it to the limit sets of a well chosen mean differential equation. Under an attainability condition,…
Stochastic approximation is a foundation for many algorithms found in machine learning and optimization. It is in general slow to converge: the mean square error vanishes as $O(n^{-1})$. A deterministic counterpart known as quasi-stochastic…
In 1951 Robbins and Monro published the seminal article on stochastic approximation and made a specific reference to its application to the "estimation of a quantal using response, nonresponse data." Since the 1990s, statistical methodology…
Stochastic approximation algorithm is a useful technique which has been exploited successfully in probability theory and statistics for a long time. The step sizes used in stochastic approximation are generally taken to be deterministic and…
The Robbins-Monro algorithm is a recursive, simulation-based stochastic procedure to approximate the zeros of a function that can be written as an expectation. It is known that under some technical assumptions, Gaussian limit distributions…
Stochastic approximation is a framework unifying many random iterative algorithms occurring in a diverse range of applications. The stability of the process is often difficult to verify in practical applications and the process may even be…
Large-scale optimization problems require algorithms both effective and efficient. One such popular and proven algorithm is Stochastic Gradient Descent which uses first-order gradient information to solve these problems. This paper studies…
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,…
Stochastic gradient descent type methods are ubiquitous in machine learning, but they are only applicable to the optimization of differentiable functions. Proximal algorithms are more general and applicable to nonsmooth functions. We…