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The convergence behavior of Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) crucially depends on the stepsize configuration. When using a constant stepsize, the SGD iterates form a Markov chain, enjoying fast convergence during the initial transient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-17 Xiang Li , Qiaomin Xie

We study the stochastic optimization problem from a continuous-time perspective, with a focus on the Stochastic Gradient Descent with Momentum (SGDM) method. We show that the trajectory of SGDM, despite its \emph{stochastic} nature,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-17 Yasong Feng , Yifan Jiang , Tianyu Wang , Zhiliang Ying

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is almost ubiquitously used for training non-convex optimization tasks. Recently, a hypothesis proposed by Keskar et al. [2017] that large batch methods tend to converge to sharp minimizers has received…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-12-04 Xiaowu Dai , Yuhua Zhu

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and its variants are the main workhorses for solving large-scale optimization problems with nonconvex objective functions. Although the convergence of SGDs in the (strongly) convex case is well-understood,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-20 Aritra Dutta , El Houcine Bergou , Soumia Boucherouite , Nicklas Werge , Melih Kandemir , Xin Li

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a widely adopted iterative method for optimizing differentiable objective functions. In this paper, we propose and discuss a novel approach to scale up SGD in applications involving non-convex functions…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-10-07 Saad Mohamad , Hamad Alamri , Abdelhamid Bouchachia

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is widely used in machine learning research. Previous convergence analyses of SGD under the vanishing step-size setting typically require Robbins-Monro conditions. However, in practice, a wider variety of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-18 Ruinan Jin , Difei Cheng , Hong Qiao , Xin Shi , Shaodong Liu , Bo Zhang

We present a theoretical analysis of stochastic optimization methods in terms of their sensitivity with respect to the step size. We identify a key quantity that, for each method, describes how the performance degrades as the step size…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-27 Fabian Schaipp , Robert M. Gower , Adrien Taylor

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is a popular tool in training large-scale machine learning models. Its performance, however, is highly variable, depending crucially on the choice of the step sizes. Accordingly, a variety of strategies for…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-06-11 Xiaoyu Li , Zhenxun Zhuang , Francesco Orabona

The stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method is a widely used approach for solving stochastic optimization problems, but its convergence is typically slow. Existing variance reduction techniques, such as SAGA, improve convergence by…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-21 Fabio Nobile , Matteo Raviola , Nathan Schaeffer

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is an out-of-equilibrium algorithm used extensively to train artificial neural networks. However very little is known on to what extent SGD is crucial for to the success of this technology and, in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-19 Persia Jana Kamali , Pierfrancesco Urbani

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a key ingredient in the training of deep neural networks and yet its geometrical significance appears elusive. We study a deterministic model in which the trajectories of our dynamical systems are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-19 R. Fioresi , P. Chaudhari , S. Soatto

In this paper, we study dimension reduction techniques for large-scale controlled stochastic differential equations (SDEs). The drift of the considered SDEs contains a polynomial term satisfying a one-sided growth condition. Such…

Probability · Mathematics 2023-03-10 Martin Redmann

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a popular algorithm for minimizing objective functions that arise in machine learning. For constant step-sized SGD, the iterates form a Markov chain on a general state space. Focusing on a class of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-03-26 David Shirokoff , Philip Zaleski

Deterministic rate equations are widely used in the study of stochastic, interacting particles systems. This approach assumes that the inherent noise, associated with the discreteness of the elementary constituents, may be neglected when…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2012-01-26 David A. Kessler , Nadav M. Shnerb

When training neural networks, it has been widely observed that a large step size is essential in stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for obtaining superior models. However, the effect of large step sizes on the success of SGD is not well…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-17 Amirkeivan Mohtashami , Martin Jaggi , Sebastian Stich

Stochastic gradient descent is a canonical tool for addressing stochastic optimization problems, and forms the bedrock of modern machine learning and statistics. In this work, we seek to balance the fact that attenuating step-size is…

Signal Processing · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-07-10 Zhan Gao , Alec Koppel , Alejandro Ribeiro

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) and its variants are almost universally used to train neural networks and to fit a variety of other parametric models. An important hyperparameter in this context is the batch size, which determines how…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-12-05 Stefan Perko

The dynamical stability of optimization methods at the vicinity of minima of the loss has recently attracted significant attention. For gradient descent (GD), stable convergence is possible only to minima that are sufficiently flat w.r.t.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-18 Rotem Mulayoff , Tomer Michaeli

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

We aim to make stochastic gradient descent (SGD) adaptive to (i) the noise $\sigma^2$ in the stochastic gradients and (ii) problem-dependent constants. When minimizing smooth, strongly-convex functions with condition number $\kappa$, we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-24 Sharan Vaswani , Benjamin Dubois-Taine , Reza Babanezhad