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Recently, zeroth-order (ZO) optimization plays an essential role in scenarios where gradient information is inaccessible or unaffordable, such as black-box systems and resource-constrained environments. While existing adaptive methods such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-10 Yao Shu , Qixin Zhang , Kun He , Zhongxiang Dai

Efficient methods for non-convex black-box optimization largely rely on sampling. In this context, the Zeroth-Order Proximal Operator (ZOPO) and the corresponding Zeroth-Order Proximal Point Algorithm (ZOPPA) have attracted significant…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-13 Emanuele Naldi , Hippolyte Labarrière , Cesare Molinari , Silvia Villa

We study stochastic zeroth-order optimization with decision-dependent distributions, where the sampling law depends on the current decision and only noisy function values are available. For the non-smooth non-convex setting, we establish an…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-08 Chengchang Liu , Zongqi Wan , Haishan Ye , John C. S. Lui

Single-objective black box optimization (also known as zeroth-order optimization) is the process of minimizing a scalar objective $f(x)$, given evaluations at adaptively chosen inputs $x$. In this paper, we consider multi-objective…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-11 Daniel Golovin , Qiuyi Zhang

Consensus-based optimization (CBO) is an agent-based derivative-free method for non-smooth global optimization that has been introduced in 2017, leveraging a surprising interplay between stochastic exploration and Laplace principle. In…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2024-10-01 Massimo Fornasier , Lukang Sun

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-23 Tengyu Xu , Zhe Wang , Yingbin Liang , H. Vincent Poor

Motivated by recent increased interest in optimization algorithms for non-convex optimization in application to training deep neural networks and other optimization problems in data analysis, we give an overview of recent theoretical…

We consider the minimization of submodular functions subject to ordering constraints. We show that this optimization problem can be cast as a convex optimization problem on a space of uni-dimensional measures, with ordering constraints…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-07-31 Francis Bach

Single-point zeroth-order optimization (SZO) is useful in solving online black-box optimization and control problems in time-varying environments, as it queries the function value only once at each time step. However, the vanilla SZO method…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-06-20 Xin Chen , Yujie Tang , Na Li

Coordinate descent methods have considerable impact in global optimization because global (or, at least, almost global) minimization is affordable for low-dimensional problems. Coordinate descent methods with high-order regularized models…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-04-28 V. S. Amaral , R. Andreani , E. G. Birgin , D. S. Marcondes , J. M. Martínez

We consider the problem of optimizing a high-dimensional convex function using stochastic zeroth-order queries. Under sparsity assumptions on the gradients or function values, we present two algorithms: a successive component/feature…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-02-27 Yining Wang , Simon Du , Sivaraman Balakrishnan , Aarti Singh

Min-max optimization is emerging as a key framework for analyzing problems of robustness to strategically and adversarially generated data. We propose a random reshuffling-based gradient free Optimistic Gradient Descent-Ascent algorithm for…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-02-22 Chinmay Maheshwari , Chih-Yuan Chiu , Eric Mazumdar , S. Shankar Sastry , Lillian J. Ratliff

Zero-shot optimization involves optimizing a target task that was not seen during training, aiming to provide the optimal solution without or with minimal adjustments to the optimizer. It is crucial to ensure reliable and robust performance…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2024-12-09 Xiaobin Li , Kai Wu , Yujian Betterest Li , Xiaoyu Zhang , Handing Wang , Jing Liu

We consider the problem of unconstrained minimization of a smooth objective function in $\mathbb{R}^d$ in setting where only function evaluations are possible. We propose and analyze stochastic zeroth-order method with heavy ball momentum.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-02-18 Eduard Gorbunov , Adel Bibi , Ozan Sener , El Houcine Bergou , Peter Richtárik

Zeroth-order optimization aims to minimize an objective function using only function evaluations, and is therefore fundamental in black-box optimization, hyperparameter tuning, bandit learning, and adversarial machine learning. While…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-28 Haishan Ye

In this paper we introduce a class of novel distributed algorithms for solving stochastic big-data convex optimization problems over directed graphs. In the addressed set-up, the dimension of the decision variable can be extremely high and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-10-06 Francesco Farina , Giuseppe Notarstefano

We introduce a new zeroth-order algorithm for private stochastic optimization on nonconvex and nonsmooth objectives. Given a dataset of size $M$, our algorithm ensures $(\alpha,\alpha\rho^2/2)$-R\'enyi differential privacy and finds a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-07-01 Qinzi Zhang , Hoang Tran , Ashok Cutkosky

Finding effective ways to exploit parallel computing to accelerate Markov chain Monte Carlo methods is an important problem in Bayesian computation and related disciplines. In this paper, we consider the zeroth-order setting where the…

Computation · Statistics 2026-01-28 Francesco Pozza , Giacomo Zanella

To understand the convergence behavior of the Push-Pull method for decentralized optimization with stochastic gradients (Stochastic Push-Pull), this paper presents a comprehensive analysis. Specifically, we first clarify the algorithm's…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-06-10 Runze You , Shi Pu

Decentralized optimization over directed graphs is essential for applications such as robotic swarms, sensor networks, and distributed learning. In many practical scenarios, the underlying network takes the form of a Time-Varying Broadcast…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-24 Liyuan Liang , Yilong Song , Kun Yuan