Related papers: Black-Box Min--Max Continuous Optimization Using C…
In this study, we consider a continuous min--max optimization problem $\min_{x \in \mathbb{X} \max_{y \in \mathbb{Y}}}f(x,y)$ whose objective function is a black-box. We propose a novel approach to minimize the worst-case objective function…
This paper considers minimax optimization $\min_x \max_y f(x, y)$ in the challenging setting where $f$ can be both nonconvex in $x$ and nonconcave in $y$. Though such optimization problems arise in many machine learning paradigms including…
The Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolutionary Strategy (CMA-ES) is one of the most advanced algorithms in numerical black-box optimization. For noisy objective functions, several approaches were proposed to mitigate the noise, e.g.,…
Black-box optimization is primarily important for many compute-intensive applications, including reinforcement learning (RL), robot control, etc. This paper presents a novel theoretical framework for black-box optimization, in which our…
We propose a novel constraint-handling technique for the covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES). The proposed technique is aimed at solving explicitly constrained black-box continuous optimization problems, in which the…
The Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES) is a popular method to deal with nonconvex and/or stochastic optimization problems when the gradient information is not available. Being based on the CMA-ES, the recently proposed…
Bilevel optimization is a field of significant theoretical and practical interest, yet solving such optimization problems remains challenging. Evolutionary methods have been employed to address these problems in the black-box setting;…
Black-box optimization problems often require simultaneously optimizing different types of variables, such as continuous, integer, and categorical variables. Unlike integer variables, categorical variables do not necessarily have a…
In this paper, we study the problem of constrained robust (min-max) optimization ina black-box setting, where the desired optimizer cannot access the gradients of the objective function but may query its values. We present a principled…
This study targets the mixed-integer black-box optimization (MI-BBO) problem where continuous and integer variables should be optimized simultaneously. The CMA-ES, our focus in this study, is a population-based stochastic search method that…
The covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES) is a powerful optimization method for continuous black-box optimization problems. Several noise-handling methods have been proposed to bring out the optimization performance of…
The covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES) is an efficient continuous black-box optimization method. The CMA-ES possesses many attractive features, including invariance properties and a well-tuned default hyperparameter…
For safety-critical black-box optimization tasks, observations of the constraints and the objective are often noisy and available only for the feasible points. We propose an approach based on log barriers to find a local solution of a…
Min-max problems have broad applications in machine learning, including learning with non-decomposable loss and learning with robustness to data distribution. Convex-concave min-max problem is an active topic of research with efficient…
The covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES) is one of the most successful methods for solving continuous black-box optimization problems. A practically useful aspect of the CMA-ES is that it can be used without…
We study the problem of finding approximate first-order stationary points in optimization problems of the form $\min_{x \in X} \max_{y \in Y} f(x,y)$, where the sets $X,Y$ are convex and $Y$ is compact. The objective function $f$ is smooth,…
The limited memory BFGS method (L-BFGS) of Liu and Nocedal (1989) is often considered to be the method of choice for continuous optimization when first- and/or second- order information is available. However, the use of L-BFGS can be…
We consider the problem of global optimization of an unknown non-convex smooth function with zeroth-order feedback. In this setup, an algorithm is allowed to adaptively query the underlying function at different locations and receives noisy…
This paper studies minimax optimization problems $\min_x \max_y f(x,y)$, where $f(x,y)$ is $m_x$-strongly convex with respect to $x$, $m_y$-strongly concave with respect to $y$ and $(L_x,L_{xy},L_y)$-smooth. Zhang et al. provided the…
We show that the exact worst-case performance of fixed-step first-order methods for unconstrained optimization of smooth (possibly strongly) convex functions can be obtained by solving convex programs. Finding the worst-case performance of…