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Solving statistical learning problems often involves nonconvex optimization. Despite the empirical success of nonconvex statistical optimization methods, their global dynamics, especially convergence to the desirable local minima, remain…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-08-30 Chris Junchi Li , Zhaoran Wang , Han Liu

In this paper we consider a distributed stochastic optimization problem without the gradient/subgradient information for the local objective functions, subject to local convex constraints. The objective functions may be non-smooth and…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2018-06-25 Yinghui Wang , Wenxiao Zhao , Yiguang Hong , Mohsen Zamani

In this article we propose a method for solving unconstrained optimization problems with convex and Lipschitz continuous objective functions. By making use of the Moreau envelopes of the functions occurring in the objective, we smooth the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2012-07-16 Radu Ioan Bot , Christopher Hendrich

Our approach is part of the close link between continuous dissipative dynamical systems and optimization algorithms. We aim to solve convex minimization problems by means of stochastic inertial differential equations which are driven by the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-06-06 Rodrigo Maulen-Soto , Jalal Fadili , Hedy Attouch , Peter Ochs

In this paper, we address stochastic optimization problems involving a composition of a non-smooth outer function and a smooth inner function, a formulation frequently encountered in machine learning and operations research. To deal with…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-15 Tommaso Giovannelli , Jingfu Tan , Luis Nunes Vicente

This paper considers the analysis of continuous time gradient-based optimization algorithms through the lens of nonlinear contraction theory. It demonstrates that in the case of a time-invariant objective, most elementary results on…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-12-23 Patrick M. Wensing , Jean-Jacques E. Slotine

In this work, we consider constrained stochastic optimization problems under hidden convexity, i.e., those that admit a convex reformulation via non-linear (but invertible) map $c(\cdot)$. A number of non-convex problems ranging from…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-11-12 Ilyas Fatkhullin , Niao He , Yifan Hu

Stochastic optimization has found wide applications in minimizing objective functions in machine learning, which motivates a lot of theoretical studies to understand its practical success. Most of existing studies focus on the convergence…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-07-19 Yunwen Lei

Classical assumptions like strong convexity and Lipschitz smoothness often fail to capture the nature of deep learning optimization problems, which are typically non-convex and non-smooth, making traditional analyses less applicable. This…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-01 Binchuan Qi , Wei Gong , Li Li

We study fundamental limits of first-order stochastic optimization in a range of nonconvex settings, including L-smooth functions satisfying Quasar-Convexity (QC), Quadratic Growth (QG), and Restricted Secant Inequalities (RSI). While the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-06-03 El Mehdi Saad , Wei-Cheng Lee , Francesco Orabona

In this paper we consider convex optimization problems with stochastic composite objective function subject to (possibly) infinite intersection of constraints. The objective function is expressed in terms of expectation operator over a sum…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-03 Ion Necoara , Nitesh Kumar Singh

A stochastic-gradient-based interior-point algorithm for minimizing a continuously differentiable objective function (that may be nonconvex) subject to bound constraints is presented, analyzed, and demonstrated through experimental results.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-15 Frank E. Curtis , Vyacheslav Kungurtsev , Daniel P. Robinson , Qi Wang

The subgradient method is one of the most fundamental algorithmic schemes for nonsmooth optimization. The existing complexity and convergence results for this method are mainly derived for Lipschitz continuous objective functions. In this…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-11-01 Xiao Li , Lei Zhao , Daoli Zhu , Anthony Man-Cho So

Distributed stochastic non-convex optimization problems have recently received attention due to the growing interest of signal processing, computer vision, and natural language processing communities in applications deployed over…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-10-14 Yiyue Chen , Abolfazl Hashemi , Haris Vikalo

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

This paper focuses on stochastic proximal gradient methods for optimizing a smooth non-convex loss function with a non-smooth non-convex regularizer and convex constraints. To the best of our knowledge we present the first non-asymptotic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-05-27 Michael R. Metel , Akiko Takeda

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…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-17 Zhihan Zhu , Yanhao Zhang , Yong Xia

We propose a stochastic gradient framework for solving stochastic composite convex optimization problems with (possibly) infinite number of linear inclusion constraints that need to be satisfied almost surely. We use smoothing and homotopy…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-02-04 Olivier Fercoq , Ahmet Alacaoglu , Ion Necoara , Volkan Cevher

We investigate the stochastic optimization problem of minimizing population risk, where the loss defining the risk is assumed to be weakly convex. Compositions of Lipschitz convex functions with smooth maps are the primary examples of such…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-12-19 Damek Davis , Dmitriy Drusvyatskiy

We prove convergence of a single time-scale stochastic subgradient method with subgradient averaging for constrained problems with a nonsmooth and nonconvex objective function having the property of generalized differentiability. As a tool…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-12-17 Andrzej Ruszczynski