Related papers: Stochastic Variance-Reduced Newton: Accelerating F…
We propose a new stochastic proximal quasi-Newton method for minimizing the sum of two convex functions in the particular context that one of the functions is the average of a large number of smooth functions and the other one is nonsmooth.…
We present a novel statistical inference framework for convex empirical risk minimization, using approximate stochastic Newton steps. The proposed algorithm is based on the notion of finite differences and allows the approximation of a…
We consider distributed stochastic optimization problems that are solved with master/workers computation architecture. Statistical arguments allow to exploit statistical similarity and approximate this problem by a finite-sum problem, for…
Superlinear convergence has been an elusive goal for black-box nonsmooth optimization. Even in the convex case, the subgradient method is very slow, and while some cutting plane algorithms, including traditional bundle methods, are popular…
This paper proposes a new family of algorithms for training neural networks (NNs). These are based on recent developments in the field of non-convex optimization, going under the general name of successive convex approximation (SCA)…
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,…
As application demands for zeroth-order (gradient-free) optimization accelerate, the need for variance reduced and faster converging approaches is also intensifying. This paper addresses these challenges by presenting: a) a comprehensive…
Stochastic optimization lies at the heart of machine learning, and its cornerstone is stochastic gradient descent (SGD), a method introduced over 60 years ago. The last 8 years have seen an exciting new development: variance reduction (VR)…
We revisit random search for stochastic optimization, where only noisy function evaluations are available. We show that the method works under weaker smoothness assumptions than previously considered, and that stronger assumptions enable…
We present an algorithm for minimizing a sum of functions that combines the computational efficiency of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with the second order curvature information leveraged by quasi-Newton methods. We unify these…
The Frank-Wolfe optimization algorithm has recently regained popularity for machine learning applications due to its projection-free property and its ability to handle structured constraints. However, in the stochastic learning setting, it…
We propose a fast proximal Newton-type algorithm for minimizing regularized finite sums that returns an $\epsilon$-suboptimal point in $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(d(n + \sqrt{\kappa d})\log(\frac{1}{\epsilon}))$ FLOPS, where $n$ is number of…
In this work, we investigate stochastic quasi-Newton methods for minimizing a finite sum of cost functions over a decentralized network. In Part I, we develop a general algorithmic framework that incorporates stochastic quasi-Newton…
In mathematical optimization, second-order Newton's methods generally converge faster than first-order methods, but they require the inverse of the Hessian, hence are computationally expensive. However, we discover that on sparse graphs,…
In this work we investigate the practicality of stochastic gradient descent and recently introduced variants with variance-reduction techniques in imaging inverse problems. Such algorithms have been shown in the machine learning literature…
Sign stochastic gradient descent (signSGD) is a communication-efficient method that transmits only the sign of stochastic gradients for parameter updating. Existing literature has demonstrated that signSGD can achieve a convergence rate of…
We study stochastic optimization of nonconvex loss functions, which are typical objectives for training neural networks. We propose stochastic approximation algorithms which optimize a series of regularized, nonlinearized losses on large…
We consider online statistical inference of constrained stochastic nonlinear optimization problems. We apply the Stochastic Sequential Quadratic Programming (StoSQP) method to solve these problems, which can be regarded as applying…
Stochastic Gradient (SG) is the defacto iterative technique to solve stochastic optimization (SO) problems with a smooth (non-convex) objective $f$ and a stochastic first-order oracle. SG's attractiveness is due in part to its simplicity of…
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…