Related papers: A Proximal Algorithm for Sampling from Non-convex …
Motivated by applications to deep learning which often fail standard Lipschitz smoothness requirements, we examine the problem of sampling from distributions that are not log-concave and are only weakly dissipative, with log-gradients…
We propose a stochastic approximation method for approximating the efficient frontier of chance-constrained nonlinear programs. Our approach is based on a bi-objective viewpoint of chance-constrained programs that seeks solutions on the…
Reachability analysis is at the core of many applications, from neural network verification, to safe trajectory planning of uncertain systems. However, this problem is notoriously challenging, and current approaches tend to be either too…
We consider minimization of functions that are compositions of convex or prox-regular functions (possibly extended-valued) with smooth vector functions. A wide variety of important optimization problems fall into this framework. We describe…
In this paper we analyze several new methods for solving nonconvex optimization problems with the objective function formed as a sum of two terms: one is nonconvex and smooth, and another is convex but simple and its structure is known.…
The computational equivalence between approximate counting and sampling is well established for polynomial-time algorithms. The most efficient general reduction from counting to sampling is achieved via simulated annealing, where the…
The generalized smooth condition, $(L_{0},L_{1})$-smoothness, has triggered people's interest since it is more realistic in many optimization problems shown by both empirical and theoretical evidence. Two recent works established the…
In this paper, we consider a class of structured nonconvex nonsmooth optimization problems, in which the objective function is formed by the sum of a possibly nonsmooth nonconvex function and a differentiable function whose gradient is…
The motivation for this paper stems from the desire to develop an adaptive sampling method for solving constrained optimization problems in which the objective function is stochastic and the constraints are deterministic. The method…
We analyze convergence rates of stochastic optimization procedures for non-smooth convex optimization problems. By combining randomized smoothing techniques with accelerated gradient methods, we obtain convergence rates of stochastic…
This paper considers a class of constrained stochastic composite optimization problems whose objective function is given by the summation of a differentiable (possibly nonconvex) component, together with a certain non-differentiable (but…
For a linear equality constrained convex optimization problem involving two objective functions with a ``nonsmooth" + ``nonsmooth" composite structure, we study two algorithms derived from a mixed-order dynamical system which incorporates…
In this chapter, we discuss recent work on learning sparse approximations to high-dimensional functions on data, where the target functions may be scalar-, vector- or even Hilbert space-valued. Our main objective is to study how the…
We consider a class of nonconvex nonsmooth optimization problems whose objective is the sum of a smooth function and a finite number of nonnegative proper closed possibly nonsmooth functions (whose proximal mappings are easy to compute),…
In this paper, we consider the problem of minimizing the average of a large number of nonsmooth and convex functions. Such problems often arise in typical machine learning problems as empirical risk minimization, but are computationally…
This paper considers a class of convex constrained nonsmooth convex stochastic composite optimization problems whose objective function is given by the summation of a differentiable convex component, together with a general nonsmooth but…
We analyze stochastic gradient algorithms for optimizing nonconvex, nonsmooth finite-sum problems. In particular, the objective function is given by the summation of a differentiable (possibly nonconvex) component, together with a possibly…
We introduce a class of stochastic algorithms for minimizing weakly convex functions over proximally smooth sets. As their main building blocks, the algorithms use simplified models of the objective function and the constraint set, along…
We consider a class of difference-of-convex (DC) optimization problems where the objective function is the sum of a smooth function and a possible nonsmooth DC function. The application of proximal DC algorithms to address this problem…
We provide the first importance sampling variants of variance reduced algorithms for empirical risk minimization with non-convex loss functions. In particular, we analyze non-convex versions of SVRG, SAGA and SARAH. Our methods have the…