Related papers: Tuning Stochastic Gradient Algorithms for Statisti…
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…
This paper presents a detailed theoretical analysis of the three stochastic approximation proximal gradient algorithms proposed in our companion paper [49] to set regularization parameters by marginal maximum likelihood estimation. We prove…
Stochastic gradient descent is a classic algorithm that has gained great popularity especially in the last decades as the most common approach for training models in machine learning. While the algorithm has been well-studied when…
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…
Variational inference approximates the posterior distribution of a probabilistic model with a parameterized density by maximizing a lower bound for the model evidence. Modern solutions fit a flexible approximation with stochastic gradient…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with mini-batching is a standard tool in large-scale optimization, yet its theoretical properties under heavy-tailed gradient noise remain largely unexplored. In this paper we study SGD with increasing…
This paper studies large sample properties of a Bayesian approach to inference about slope parameters $\gamma$ in linear regression models with a structural break. In contrast to the conventional approach to inference about $\gamma$ that…
Constant-stepsize stochastic approximation (SA) is widely used in learning for computational efficiency. For a fixed stepsize, the iterates typically admit a stationary distribution that is rarely tractable. Prior work shows that as the…
There is an increasing realization that algorithmic inductive biases are central in preventing overfitting; empirically, we often see a benign overfitting phenomenon in overparameterized settings for natural learning algorithms, such as…
Recently there is a large amount of work devoted to the study of Markov chain stochastic gradient methods (MC-SGMs) which mainly focus on their convergence analysis for solving minimization problems. In this paper, we provide a…
Stochastic gradient algorithms are the main focus of large-scale optimization problems and led to important successes in the recent advancement of the deep learning algorithms. The convergence of SGD depends on the careful choice of…
High-dimensional limit theorems have been shown useful to derive tuning rules for finding the optimal scaling in random-walk Metropolis algorithms. The assumptions under which weak convergence results are proved are however restrictive: the…
We introduce a means of automating machine learning (ML) for big data tasks, by performing scalable stochastic Bayesian optimisation of ML algorithm parameters and hyper-parameters. More often than not, the critical tuning of ML algorithm…
An increasing number of machine learning problems, such as robust or adversarial variants of existing algorithms, require minimizing a loss function that is itself defined as a maximum. Carrying a loop of stochastic gradient ascent (SGA)…
Optimizers like Adam and AdaGrad have been very successful in training large-scale neural networks. Yet, the performance of these methods is heavily dependent on a carefully tuned learning rate schedule. We show that in many large-scale…
Stochastic gradient methods for machine learning and optimization problems are usually analyzed assuming data points are sampled \emph{with} replacement. In practice, however, sampling \emph{without} replacement is very common, easier to…
Stochastic Gradient Algorithms (SGAs) are ubiquitous in computational statistics, machine learning and optimisation. Recent years have brought an influx of interest in SGAs, and the non-asymptotic analysis of their bias is by now…
Stochastic Gradient (SG) Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms (MCMC) are popular algorithms for Bayesian sampling in the presence of large datasets. However, they come with little theoretical guarantees and assessing their empirical…
A framework is introduced for solving a sequence of slowly changing optimization problems, including those arising in regression and classification applications, using optimization algorithms such as stochastic gradient descent (SGD). The…
We study the learning dynamics of a multi-pass, mini-batch Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) procedure for empirical risk minimization in high-dimensional multi-index models with isotropic random data. In an asymptotic regime where the…