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We study nonconvex distributed optimization in multi-agent networks with time-varying (nonsymmetric) connectivity. We introduce the first algorithmic framework for the distributed minimization of the sum of a smooth (possibly nonconvex and…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2016-02-02 Paolo Di Lorenzo , Gesualdo Scutari

Discretization of continuous-time diffusion processes is a widely recognized method for sampling. However, the canonical Euler Maruyama discretization of the Langevin diffusion process, referred as Unadjusted Langevin Algorithm (ULA),…

Computation · Statistics 2021-07-28 Dao Nguyen , Xin Dang , Yixin Chen

This paper deals with convex nonsmooth optimization problems. We introduce a general smooth approximation framework for the original function and apply random (accelerated) coordinate descent methods for minimizing the corresponding smooth…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-01-10 Flavia Chorobura , Ion Necoara

We propose an adaptive smoothing algorithm based on Nesterov's smoothing technique in \cite{Nesterov2005c} for solving "fully" nonsmooth composite convex optimization problems. Our method combines both Nesterov's accelerated proximal…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-07-05 Quoc Tran-Dinh

We study the problem of sampling from a distribution $\mu$ with density $\propto e^{-V}$ for some potential function $V:\mathbb R^d\to \mathbb R$ with query access to $V$ and $\nabla V$. We start with the following standard assumptions: (1)…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Yuchen He , Zhehan Lei , Jianan Shao , Chihao Zhang

We consider minimization of stochastic functionals that are compositions of a (potentially) non-smooth convex function $h$ and smooth function $c$ and, more generally, stochastic weakly-convex functionals. We develop a family of stochastic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-09-25 John Duchi , Feng Ruan

As the number of samples and dimensionality of optimization problems related to statistics an machine learning explode, block coordinate descent algorithms have gained popularity since they reduce the original problem to several smaller…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-06-24 Rémi Flamary , Alain Rakotomamonjy , Gilles Gasso

Consider the problem of minimizing the sum of two convex functions, one being smooth and the other non-smooth. In this paper, we introduce a general class of approximate proximal splitting (APS) methods for solving such minimization…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-04-23 Mojtaba Kadkhodaie , Maziar Sanjabi , Zhi-Quan Luo

An algorithm is proposed, analyzed, and tested for minimizing locally Lipschitz objective functions that may be nonconvex and/or nonsmooth. The algorithm, which is built upon the gradient-sampling methodology, is designed specifically for…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-02 Albert S. Berahas , Frank E. Curtis , Lara Zebiane

In this paper we develop proximal methods for statistical learning. Proximal point algorithms are useful in statistics and machine learning for obtaining optimization solutions for composite functions. Our approach exploits closed-form…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-06-02 Nicholas G. Polson , James G. Scott , Brandon T. Willard

The goal of the paper is development of an optimization method with the superlinear convergence rate for a nonsmooth convex function. For optimization an approximation is used that is similar to the Steklov integral averaging. The…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-08-03 I. M. Prudnikov

We consider minimizing a function consisting of a quadratic term and a proximable term which is possibly nonconvex and nonsmooth. This problem is also known as scaled proximal operator. Despite its simple form, existing methods suffer from…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-01 Yiming Zhou , Wei Dai

We propose a new first-order optimisation algorithm to solve high-dimensional non-smooth composite minimisation problems. Typical examples of such problems have an objective that decomposes into a non-smooth empirical risk part and a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-07-07 Niao He , Zaid Harchaoui

Sampling from Gibbs distributions and computing their log-partition function are fundamental tasks in statistics, machine learning, and statistical physics. While efficient algorithms are known for log-concave densities, the worst-case…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-24 David Holzmüller , Francis Bach

In Statistics, log-concave density estimation is a central problem within the field of nonparametric inference under shape constraints. Despite great progress in recent years on the statistical theory of the canonical estimator, namely the…

Computation · Statistics 2023-03-01 Wenyu Chen , Rahul Mazumder , Richard J. Samworth

Recent studies have shown that many nonconvex machine learning problems satisfy a generalized-smooth condition that extends beyond traditional smooth nonconvex optimization. However, the existing algorithms are not fully adapted to such…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-03 Yufeng Yang , Erin Tripp , Yifan Sun , Shaofeng Zou , Yi Zhou

Various optimal gradient-based algorithms have been developed for smooth nonconvex optimization. However, many nonconvex machine learning problems do not belong to the class of smooth functions and therefore the existing algorithms are…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-06-27 Ziyi Chen , Yi Zhou , Yingbin Liang , Zhaosong Lu

In this paper, we consider a broad class of nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization problems, where one objective component is a nonsmooth weakly convex function composed with a linear operator. By integrating variable smoothing techniques…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-03 Xian-Jun Long , Kang Zeng , Gao-Xi Li , Minh N. Dao , Zai-Yun Peng

Alternating structure-adapted proximal (ASAP) gradient algorithm (M. Nikolova and P. Tan, SIAM J Optim, 29:2053-2078, 2019) has drawn much attention due to its efficiency in solving nonconvex nonsmooth optimization problems. However, the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-26 Ying Gao , Chunfeng Cui , Wenxing Zhang , Deren Han

Discretization of continuous-time diffusion processes is a widely recognized method for sampling. However, it seems to be a considerable restriction when the potentials are often required to be smooth (gradient Lipschitz). This paper…

Computation · Statistics 2022-02-23 Dao Nguyen