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The complexity in large-scale optimization can lie in both handling the objective function and handling the constraint set. In this respect, stochastic Frank-Wolfe algorithms occupy a unique position as they alleviate both computational…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-02-16 Cyrille W. Combettes , Christoph Spiegel , Sebastian Pokutta

Of all the vector fields surrounding the minima of recurrent learning setups, the gradient field with its exploding and vanishing updates appears a poor choice for optimization, offering little beyond efficient computability. We seek to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-06 Patrick Schnell , Nils Thuerey

Multilevel optimization has gained renewed interest in machine learning due to its promise in applications such as hyperparameter tuning and continual learning. However, existing methods struggle with the inherent difficulty of efficiently…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-16 Yuntian Gu , Xuzheng Chen

We propose proximal backpropagation (ProxProp) as a novel algorithm that takes implicit instead of explicit gradient steps to update the network parameters during neural network training. Our algorithm is motivated by the step size…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-02-21 Thomas Frerix , Thomas Möllenhoff , Michael Moeller , Daniel Cremers

The integration of constrained optimization models as components in deep networks has led to promising advances on many specialized learning tasks. A central challenge in this setting is backpropagation through the solution of an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-06 James Kotary , My H. Dinh , Ferdinando Fioretto

We propose an optimization proxy in terms of iterative implicit gradient methods for solving constrained optimization problems with nonconvex loss functions. This framework can be applied to a broad range of machine learning settings,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-14 Harshal D. Kaushik , Ming Jin

Finding the optimal hyperparameters of a model can be cast as a bilevel optimization problem, typically solved using zero-order techniques. In this work we study first-order methods when the inner optimization problem is convex but…

Conditional gradients constitute a class of projection-free first-order algorithms for smooth convex optimization. As such, they are frequently used in solving smooth convex optimization problems over polytopes, for which the computational…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-10-14 Jelena Diakonikolas , Alejandro Carderera , Sebastian Pokutta

We present a stochastic descent algorithm for unconstrained optimization that is particularly efficient when the objective function is slow to evaluate and gradients are not easily obtained, as in some PDE-constrained optimization and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-07-08 David Kozak , Stephen Becker , Alireza Doostan , Luis Tenorio

Preconditioning is a crucial operation in gradient-based numerical optimisation. It helps decrease the local condition number of a function by appropriately transforming its gradient. For a convex function, where the gradient can be…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-08-29 Dmitrii A. Pasechnyuk , Alexander Gasnikov , Martin Takáč

We consider the problem of maximizing a convex function over a closed convex set in a real Hilbert space. For linear functions, we show that a single orthogonal projection suffices to obtain an approximate solution. For continuous convex…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-23 Pedro Felzenszwalb , Heon Lee

Modern adaptive optimization methods, such as Adam and its variants, have emerged as the most widely used tools in deep learning over recent years. These algorithms offer automatic mechanisms for dynamically adjusting the update step based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-12 Son Nguyen , Bo Liu , Lizhang Chen , Qiang Liu

In this paper, we suggest a new framework for analyzing primal subgradient methods for nonsmooth convex optimization problems. We show that the classical step-size rules, based on normalization of subgradient, or on the knowledge of optimal…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-27 Yurii Nesterov

This paper studies the distributed optimization problem when the objective functions might be nondifferentiable and subject to heterogeneous set constraints. Unlike existing subgradient methods, we focus on the case when the exact…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-11-23 Kui Zhu , Yutao Tang

Momentum-based gradients are essential for optimizing advanced machine learning models, as they not only accelerate convergence but also advance optimizers to escape stationary points. While most state-of-the-art momentum techniques utilize…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Wei Zhang , Arif Hassan Zidan , Afrar Jahin , Yu Bao , Tianming Liu

The need for fast and robust optimization algorithms are of critical importance in all areas of machine learning. This paper treats the task of designing optimization algorithms as an optimal control problem. Using regret as a metric for an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-21 Philippe Casgrain , Anastasis Kratsios

Stochastic gradient optimization is the dominant learning paradigm for a variety of scenarios, from classical supervised learning to modern self-supervised learning. We consider stochastic gradient algorithms for learning problems whose…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-08-29 Facheng Yu , Ronak Mehta , Alex Luedtke , Zaid Harchaoui

We introduce a general method for improving the convergence rate of gradient-based optimizers that is easy to implement and works well in practice. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the method in a range of optimization problems by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-08-23 Atilim Gunes Baydin , Robert Cornish , David Martinez Rubio , Mark Schmidt , Frank Wood

Smooth, non-convex optimization problems on Riemannian manifolds occur in machine learning as a result of orthonormality, rank or positivity constraints. First- and second-order necessary optimality conditions state that the Riemannian…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-10-24 Chris Criscitiello , Nicolas Boumal

The development of the back-propagation algorithm represents a landmark in neural networks. We provide an approach that conducts the back-propagation again to reverse the traditional back-propagation process to optimize the input loss at…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-15 Weiming Xiong , Ruoyu Yang