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Zeroth-order (derivative-free) optimization attracts a lot of attention in machine learning, because explicit gradient calculations may be computationally expensive or infeasible. To handle large scale problems both in volume and dimension,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-12-06 Bin Gu , Zhouyuan Huo , Heng Huang

In this study, we delve into an emerging optimization challenge involving a black-box objective function that can only be gauged via a ranking oracle-a situation frequently encountered in real-world scenarios, especially when the function…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-16 Zhiwei Tang , Dmitry Rybin , Tsung-Hui Chang

We analyze a zeroth-order particle algorithm for the global optimization of a non-convex function, focusing on a variant of Consensus-Based Optimization (CBO) with small but fixed noise intensity. Unlike most previous studies restricted to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-24 Pascal Bianchi , Radu-Alexandru Dragomir , Victor Priser

Two types of zeroth-order stochastic algorithms have recently been designed for nonconvex optimization respectively based on the first-order techniques SVRG and SARAH/SPIDER. This paper addresses several important issues that are still open…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-29 Kaiyi Ji , Zhe Wang , Yi Zhou , Yingbin Liang

Derivative-free optimization has become an important technique used in machine learning for optimizing black-box models. To conduct updates without explicitly computing gradient, most current approaches iteratively sample a random search…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-08-03 Liu Liu , Minhao Cheng , Cho-Jui Hsieh , Dacheng Tao

Zeroth-order optimization addresses problems where gradient information is inaccessible or impractical to compute. While most existing methods rely on first-order approximations, incorporating second-order (curvature) information can, in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-09 Dongyoon Kim , Sungjae Lee , Wonjin Lee , Kwang In Kim

In this paper, we study zeroth-order algorithms for nonconvex-concave minimax problems, which have attracted widely attention in machine learning, signal processing and many other fields in recent years. We propose a zeroth-order…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-01-26 Zi Xu , Ziqi Wang , Jingjing Shen , Yuhong Dai

This paper focuses on a multi-agent zeroth-order online optimization problem in a federated learning setting for target tracking. The agents only sense their current distances to their targets and aim to maintain a minimum safe distance…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-12 Ege C. Kaya , M. Berk Sahin , Abolfazl Hashemi

Decentralized nonconvex optimization has received increasing attention in recent years in machine learning due to its advantages in system robustness, data privacy, and implementation simplicity. However, three fundamental challenges in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-20 Xin Zhang , Jia Liu , Zhengyuan Zhu , Elizabeth S. Bentley

We consider a zeroth-order distributed optimization problem, where the global objective function is a black-box function and, as such, its gradient information is inaccessible to the local agents. Instead, the local agents can only use the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-09-29 Yi Shen , Yan Zhang , Scott Nivison , Zachary I. Bell , Michael M. Zavlanos

We propose a novel zeroth-order optimization algorithm based on an efficient sampling strategy. Under mild global regularity conditions on the objective function, we establish non-asymptotic convergence rates for the proposed method.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-24 Xicheng Zhang

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

In this paper, we investigate a distributed interval optimization problem which is modeled with optimizing a sum of convex interval-valued objective functions subject to global convex constraints, corresponding to agents over a time-varying…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-05-01 Yinghui Wang , Xianlin Zeng , Wenxiao Zhao , Yiguang Hong

Consensus-based optimization (CBO) is a powerful and versatile zero-order multi-particle method designed to provably solve high-dimensional global optimization problems, including those that are genuinely nonconvex or nonsmooth. The method…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-13 Massimo Fornasier , Hui Huang , Jona Klemenc , Greta Malaspina

This paper introduces a class of model-free feedback methods for solving generic constrained optimization problems where the specific mathematical forms of the objective and constraint functions are not available. The proposed methods,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-02-13 Xin Chen , Jorge I. Poveda , Na Li

Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization has long been favored for its biological plausibility and its capacity to handle non-differentiable objectives, yet its computational complexity has historically limited its application in deep neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-12 Sansheng Cao , Zhengyu Ma , Yonghong Tian

The minimax excess risk optimization (MERO) problem is a new variation of the traditional distributionally robust optimization (DRO) problem, which achieves uniformly low regret across all test distributions under suitable conditions. In…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-08-23 Zhihao Gu , Zi Xu

We introduce primal and dual stochastic gradient oracle methods for decentralized convex optimization problems. Both for primal and dual oracles, the proposed methods are optimal in terms of the number of communication steps. However, for…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-02-12 Darina Dvinskikh , Alexander Gasnikov

Lately, a novel swarm intelligence model, namely the consensus-based optimization (CBO) algorithm, was introduced to deal with the global optimization problems. Limited by the conditions of Ito's formula, the convergence analysis of the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-14 Jiazhen Wei , Wei Bian

This paper investigates accelerating the convergence of distributed optimization algorithms on non-convex problems. We propose a distributed primal-dual stochastic gradient descent~(SGD) equipped with "powerball" method to accelerate. We…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-10-15 Shengjun Zhang , Colleen P. Bailey