English
Related papers

Related papers: Nesterov smoothing for sampling without smoothness

200 papers

We analyze a batched variant of Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) with weighted sampling distribution for smooth and non-smooth objective functions. We show that by distributing the batches computationally, a significant speedup in the…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2017-03-02 Deanna Needell , Rachel Ward

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 introduce a new method for solving nonlinear continuous optimization problems with chance constraints. Our method is based on a reformulation of the probabilistic constraint as a quantile function. The quantile function is approximated…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-03-17 Alejandra Peña-Ordieres , James R. Luedtke , Andreas Wächter

Nested sampling is a powerful approach to Bayesian inference ultimately limited by the computationally demanding task of sampling from a heavily constrained probability distribution. An effective algorithm in its own right, Hamiltonian…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2015-03-02 M. J. Betancourt

This paper proposes a novel technique called "successive stochastic smoothing" that optimizes nonsmooth and discontinuous functions while considering various constraints. Our methodology enables local and global optimization, making it a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-08-17 Vladimir Norkin , Alois Pichler , Anton Kozyriev

Sampling from various kinds of distributions is an issue of paramount importance in statistics since it is often the key ingredient for constructing estimators, test procedures or confidence intervals. In many situations, the exact sampling…

Computation · Statistics 2016-12-06 Arnak S. Dalalyan

Stochastic gradient descent type methods are ubiquitous in machine learning, but they are only applicable to the optimization of differentiable functions. Proximal algorithms are more general and applicable to nonsmooth functions. We…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-20 Laurent Condat , Elnur Gasanov , Peter Richtárik

Bayesian model selection provides a powerful framework for objectively comparing models directly from observed data, without reference to ground truth data. However, Bayesian model selection requires the computation of the marginal…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-01-17 Xiaohao Cai , Jason D. McEwen , Marcelo Pereyra

We consider convex optimization with non-smooth objective function and log-concave sampling with non-smooth potential (negative log density). In particular, we study two specific settings where the convex objective/potential function is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-13 Jiaming Liang , Yongxin Chen

Mixture models are regularly used in density estimation applications, but the problem of estimating the mixing distribution remains a challenge. Nonparametric maximum likelihood produce estimates of the mixing distribution that are…

Computation · Statistics 2019-06-28 Minwoo Chae , Ryan Martin , Stephen G. Walker

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…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-05-24 Sashank J. Reddi , Suvrit Sra , Barnabas Poczos , Alex Smola

In this paper we consider large-scale smooth optimization problems with multiple linear coupled constraints. Due to the non-separability of the constraints, arbitrary random sketching would not be guaranteed to work. Thus, we first…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-08-09 Ion Necoara , Martin Takac

In the lines of our approach in \cite{Ouorou2019}, where we exploit Nesterov fast gradient concept \cite{Nesterov1983} to the Moreau-Yosida regularization of a convex function, we devise new proximal algorithms for nonsmooth convex…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-10-08 Adam Ouorou

Collecting the most informative data from a large dataset distributed over a network is a fundamental problem in many fields, including control, signal processing and machine learning. In this paper, we establish a connection between…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-06-05 Xu Zhang , Marcos M. Vasconcelos

This paper considers a class of convex constrained nonsmooth convex stochastic composite optimization problems whose objective function is given by the summation of a differentiable convex component, together with a general nonsmooth but…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-12-08 Ruyu Wang , Chao Zhang

A novel formulation of the clustering problem is introduced in which the task is expressed as an estimation problem, where the object to be estimated is a function which maps a point to its distribution of cluster membership. Unlike…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-14 David P. Hofmeyr

Achieving robust uncertainty quantification for deep neural networks represents an important requirement in many real-world applications of deep learning such as medical imaging where it is necessary to assess the reliability of a neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-15 Tim Rensmeyer , Oliver Niggemann

Reachability analysis is at the core of many applications, from neural network verification, to safe trajectory planning of uncertain systems. However, this problem is notoriously challenging, and current approaches tend to be either too…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-11-10 Thomas Lew , Marco Pavone

Optimization plays a key role in machine learning. Recently, stochastic second-order methods have attracted much attention due to their low computational cost in each iteration. However, these algorithms might perform poorly especially if…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-10-25 Haishan Ye , Zhihua Zhang

We introduce an optimal strategy to sample quantum outcomes of local measurement strings for isometric tensor network states. Our method generates samples based on an exact cumulative bounding function, without prior knowledge, in the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-04-23 Marco Ballarin , Pietro Silvi , Simone Montangero , Daniel Jaschke