Related papers: Uncertainty quantification for subgradient descent…
We propose new sequential simulation-optimization algorithms for general convex optimization via simulation problems with high-dimensional discrete decision space. The performance of each choice of discrete decision variables is evaluated…
Prediction-correction algorithms are a highly effective class of methods for solving pseudo-convex optimization problems. The descent direction of these algorithms can be viewed as an adjustment to the gradient direction based on the…
The convergence behavior of gradient methods for minimizing convex differentiable functions is one of the core questions in convex optimization. This paper shows that their well-known complexities can be achieved under conditions weaker…
We develop a new primitive for stochastic optimization: a low-bias, low-cost estimator of the minimizer $x_\star$ of any Lipschitz strongly-convex function. In particular, we use a multilevel Monte-Carlo approach due to Blanchet and Glynn…
We present a variant of accelerated gradient descent algorithms, adapted from Nesterov's optimal first-order methods, for weakly-quasi-convex and weakly-quasi-strongly-convex functions. We show that by tweaking the so-called estimate…
Recent years have seen a flurry of activities in designing provably efficient nonconvex procedures for solving statistical estimation problems. Due to the highly nonconvex nature of the empirical loss, state-of-the-art procedures often…
We present a new feasible proximal gradient method for constrained optimization where both the objective and constraint functions are given by the summation of a smooth, possibly nonconvex function and a convex simple function. The…
We study the problem of estimating low-rank matrices from linear measurements (a.k.a., matrix sensing) through nonconvex optimization. We propose an efficient stochastic variance reduced gradient descent algorithm to solve a nonconvex…
Many fundamental problems in machine learning can be formulated by the convex program \[ \min_{\theta\in R^d}\ \sum_{i=1}^{n}f_{i}(\theta), \] where each $f_i$ is a convex, Lipschitz function supported on a subset of $d_i$ coordinates of…
We consider the problem of optimizing the sum of a smooth convex function and a non-smooth convex function using proximal-gradient methods, where an error is present in the calculation of the gradient of the smooth term or in the proximity…
We identify and analyze a fundamental limitation of the classical projected subgradient method in nonsmooth convex optimization: the inevitable failure caused by the absence of valid subgradients at boundary points. We show that, under…
To solve convex optimization problems with a noisy gradient input, we analyze the global behavior of subgradient-like flows under stochastic errors. The objective function is composite, being equal to the sum of two convex functions, one…
This book is devoted to finite-dimensional problems of non-convex non-smooth optimization and numerical methods for their solution. The problem of nonconvexity is studied in the book on two main models of nonconvex dependencies: these are…
In this paper we consider large-scale composite optimization problems having the objective function formed as a sum of two terms (possibly nonconvex), one has (block) coordinate-wise Lipschitz continuous gradient and the other is…
We propose a simple, scalable, and fast gradient descent algorithm to optimize a nonconvex objective for the rank minimization problem and a closely related family of semidefinite programs. With $O(r^3 \kappa^2 n \log n)$ random…
We analyze stochastic algorithms for optimizing nonconvex, nonsmooth finite-sum problems, where the nonconvex part is smooth and the nonsmooth part is convex. Surprisingly, unlike the smooth case, our knowledge of this fundamental problem…
This paper considers stochastic optimization problems for a large class of objective functions, including convex and continuous submodular. Stochastic proximal gradient methods have been widely used to solve such problems; however, their…
A subgradient method is presented for solving general convex optimization problems, the main requirement being that a strictly-feasible point is known. A feasible sequence of iterates is generated, which converges to within user-specified…
We study the worst-case convergence rates of the proximal gradient method for minimizing the sum of a smooth strongly convex function and a non-smooth convex function whose proximal operator is available. We establish the exact worst-case…
We perform the first tight convergence analysis of the gradient method with varying step sizes when applied to smooth hypoconvex (weakly convex) functions. Hypoconvex functions are smooth nonconvex functions whose curvature is bounded and…