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An algorithm for unconstrained non-convex optimization is described, which does not evaluate the objective function and in which minimization is carried out, at each iteration, within a randomly selected subspace. It is shown that this…
In this paper, we consider a class of non-convex and non-smooth sparse optimization problems, which encompass most existing nonconvex sparsity-inducing terms. We show the second-order optimality conditions only depend on the nonzeros of the…
The analysis of gradient descent-type methods typically relies on the Lipschitz continuity of the objective gradient. This generally requires an expensive hyperparameter tuning process to appropriately calibrate a stepsize for a given…
We consider the minimization of a Lipschitz continuous and expectation-valued function, denoted by $f$ and defined as $f(\mathbf{x}) \triangleq \mathbb{E}[\tilde{f}(\mathbf{x}, \mathbf{\xi})]$, over a closed and convex set $\mathcal{X}$. We…
We propose a new first-order method for minimizing nonconvex functions with a Lipschitz continuous gradient and Hessian. The proposed method is an accelerated gradient descent with two restart mechanisms and finds a solution where the…
We consider decentralized gradient-free optimization of minimizing Lipschitz continuous functions that satisfy neither smoothness nor convexity assumption. We propose two novel gradient-free algorithms, the Decentralized Gradient-Free…
We propose a first order algorithm, a modified version of FISTA, to solve an optimization problem with an objective function that is a sum of a possibly nonconvex function, with Lipschitz continuous gradient, and a convex function which can…
This paper addresses stochastic optimization of Lipschitz-continuous, nonsmooth and nonconvex objectives over compact convex sets, where only noisy function evaluations are available. While gradient-free methods have been developed for…
We extend the standard notion of self-concordance to non-convex optimization and develop a family of second-order algorithms with global convergence guarantees. In particular, two function classes -- \textit{weakly self-concordant}…
We consider a stochastic version of the proximal point algorithm for optimization problems posed on a Hilbert space. A typical application of this is supervised learning. While the method is not new, it has not been extensively analyzed in…
First-order algorithms have been popular for solving convex and non-convex optimization problems. A key assumption for the majority of these algorithms is that the gradient of the objective function is globally Lipschitz continuous, but…
We consider the optimization of a quadratic objective function whose gradients are only accessible through a stochastic oracle that returns the gradient at any given point plus a zero-mean finite variance random error. We present the first…
An adaptive regularization algorithm for unconstrained nonconvex optimization is presented in which the objective function is never evaluated, but only derivatives are used. This algorithm belongs to the class of adaptive regularization…
We analyze the constant step size subgradient method on nonsmooth, nonconvex functions. We identify geometric assumptions on the objective function under which i) its domain admits a partition (stratification) into smooth manifolds (strata)…
In this note, we consider the complexity of optimizing a highly smooth (Lipschitz $k$-th order derivative) and strongly convex function, via calls to a $k$-th order oracle which returns the value and first $k$ derivatives of the function at…
Algorithms for bilevel optimization often encounter Hessian computations, which are prohibitive in high dimensions. While recent works offer first-order methods for unconstrained bilevel problems, the constrained setting remains relatively…
Poisson likelihood models have been prevalently used in imaging, social networks, and time series analysis. We propose fast, simple, theoretically-grounded, and versatile, optimization algorithms for Poisson likelihood modeling. The Poisson…
We develop optimization methods which offer new trade-offs between the number of gradient and Hessian computations needed to compute the critical point of a non-convex function. We provide a method that for any twice-differentiable $f\colon…
In this work, we propose a method for minimizing non-convex functions with Lipschitz continuous $p$th-order derivatives, starting from $p \geq 1$. The method, however, only requires derivative information up to order $(p-1)$, since the…
We propose a derivative-free trust-region method based on finite-difference gradient approximations for smooth optimization problems with convex constraints. The proposed method does not require computing an approximate stationarity…