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Related papers: Heavy-Tail Phenomenon in Decentralized SGD

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We study stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for composite optimization problems with $N$ sequential operators subject to perturbations in both the forward and backward passes. Unlike classical analyses that treat gradient noise as additive…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-25 Boao Kong , Hengrui Zhang , Kun Yuan

We provide upper bounds on the end-to-end backlog and delay in a network with heavy-tailed and self-similar traffic. The analysis follows a network calculus approach where traffic is characterized by envelope functions and service is…

Networking and Internet Architecture · Computer Science 2013-12-30 Jorg Liebeherr , Almut Burchard , Florin Ciucu

We study high-probability convergence in online learning, in the presence of heavy-tailed noise. To combat the heavy tails, a general framework of nonlinear SGD methods is considered, subsuming several popular nonlinearities like sign,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-24 Aleksandar Armacki , Shuhua Yu , Pranay Sharma , Gauri Joshi , Dragana Bajovic , Dusan Jakovetic , Soummya Kar

We consider a two-node fluid network with batch arrivals of random size having a heavy-tailed distribution. We are interested in the tail asymptotics for the stationary distribution of a two-dimensional queue-length process. The tail…

Probability · Mathematics 2016-11-25 Sergey Foss , Masakiyo Miyazawa

Understanding when the noise in stochastic gradient descent (SGD) affects generalization of deep neural networks remains a challenge, complicated by the fact that networks can operate in distinct training regimes. Here we study how the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-31 Antonio Sclocchi , Mario Geiger , Matthieu Wyart

Heavy tails are often found in practice, and yet they are an Achilles heel of a variety of mainstream random probability measures such as the Dirichlet process (DP). The first contribution of this paper focuses on characterizing the tails…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-04-04 Vianey Palacios Ramirez , Miguel de Carvalho , Luis Gutierrez Inostroza

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is the most popular algorithm for training deep neural networks (DNNs). As larger networks and datasets cause longer training times, training on distributed systems is common and distributed SGD variants,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-17 Kwangmin Yu , Thomas Flynn , Shinjae Yoo , Nicholas D'Imperio

In general, obtaining the exact steady-state distribution of queue lengths is not feasible. Therefore, we establish bounds for the tail probabilities of queue lengths. Specifically, we examine queueing systems under Heavy-Traffic (HT)…

Probability · Mathematics 2023-06-21 Prakirt Raj Jhunjhunwala , Daniela Hurtado-Lange , Siva Theja Maguluri

In this paper, we consider the problem of designing Differentially Private (DP) algorithms for Stochastic Convex Optimization (SCO) on heavy-tailed data. The irregularity of such data violates some key assumptions used in almost all…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-22 Di Wang , Hanshen Xiao , Srini Devadas , Jinhui Xu

Power-law probability distributions are widely used to model extreme statistical events in complex systems, with applications to a vast array of natural phenomena ranging from earthquakes to stock market crashes to pandemics. We show that…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-04-08 Wai-Keong Mok

While stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and variants have been surprisingly successful for training deep nets, several aspects of the optimization dynamics and generalization are still not well understood. In this paper, we present new…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-07-26 Xinyan Li , Qilong Gu , Yingxue Zhou , Tiancong Chen , Arindam Banerjee

It is not uncommon that real-world data are distributed with a long tail. For such data, the learning of deep neural networks becomes challenging because it is hard to classify tail classes correctly. In the literature, several existing…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2024-07-19 Mengke Li , Yiu-ming Cheung , Yang Lu , Zhikai Hu , Weichao Lan , Hui Huang

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a ubiquitous algorithm for a variety of machine learning problems. Researchers and industry have developed several techniques to optimize SGD's runtime performance, including asynchronous execution and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-10-06 Christopher De Sa , Ce Zhang , Kunle Olukotun , Christopher Ré

We consider distributed optimization under communication constraints for training deep learning models. We propose a new algorithm, whose parameter updates rely on two forces: a regular gradient step, and a corrective direction dictated by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-29 Yunfei Teng , Wenbo Gao , Francois Chalus , Anna Choromanska , Donald Goldfarb , Adrian Weller

Overload-induced cascading failures can cause extreme disruptions in a wide range of networked systems, such as power grids, transportation networks, or financial systems. Empirical studies across domains report that the size of such…

Physics and Society · Physics 2026-01-06 Agnieszka Janicka , Fiona Sloothaak , Maria Vlasiou , Bert Zwart

We showcase important features of the dynamics of the Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) in the training of neural networks. We present empirical observations that commonly used large step sizes (i) lead the iterates to jump from one side of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-08 Maksym Andriushchenko , Aditya Varre , Loucas Pillaud-Vivien , Nicolas Flammarion

A network evolution with predicted tail and extremal indices of PageRank and the Max-Linear Model used as node influence indices in random graphs is considered. The tail index shows a heaviness of the distribution tail. The extremal index…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-11-28 Natalia Markovich

Decentralized learning offers privacy and communication efficiency when data are naturally distributed among agents communicating over an underlying graph. Motivated by overparameterized learning settings, in which models are trained to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-28 Hossein Taheri , Christos Thrampoulidis

Differentially private stochastic gradient descent (DP-SGD) is known to have poorer training and test performance on large neural networks, compared to ordinary stochastic gradient descent (SGD). In this paper, we perform a detailed study…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-14 Lauren Watson , Eric Gan , Mohan Dantam , Baharan Mirzasoleiman , Rik Sarkar

Out-of-distribution (OOD) detection is crucial for deploying robust machine learning models. However, when training data follows a long-tailed distribution, the model's ability to accurately detect OOD samples is significantly compromised,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-26 Shuai Feng , Yuxin Ge , Yuntao Du , Mingcai Chen , Chongjun Wang , Lei Feng