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In this paper, we propose a variant of Riemannian stochastic recursive gradient method that can achieve second-order convergence guarantee and escape saddle points using simple perturbation. The idea is to perturb the iterates when gradient…
Escaping saddle points is a central research topic in nonconvex optimization. In this paper, we propose a simple gradient-based algorithm such that for a smooth function $f\colon\mathbb{R}^n\to\mathbb{R}$, it outputs an…
Although gradient descent (GD) almost always escapes saddle points asymptotically [Lee et al., 2016], this paper shows that even with fairly natural random initialization schemes and non-pathological functions, GD can be significantly…
Saddle-point problems have recently gained increased attention from the machine learning community, mainly due to applications in training Generative Adversarial Networks using stochastic gradients. At the same time, in some applications…
A central challenge to using first-order methods for optimizing nonconvex problems is the presence of saddle points. First-order methods often get stuck at saddle points, greatly deteriorating their performance. Typically, to escape from…
Local search heuristics for non-convex optimizations are popular in applied machine learning. However, in general it is hard to guarantee that such algorithms even converge to a local minimum, due to the existence of complicated saddle…
We consider the problem of empirical risk minimization given a database, using the gradient descent algorithm. We note that the function to be optimized may be non-convex, consisting of saddle points which impede the convergence of the…
Momentum Stochastic Gradient Descent (MSGD) algorithm has been widely applied to many nonconvex optimization problems in machine learning, e.g., training deep neural networks, variational Bayesian inference, and etc. Despite its empirical…
The rapid progress in machine learning in recent years has been based on a highly productive connection to gradient-based optimization. Further progress hinges in part on a shift in focus from pattern recognition to decision-making and…
Variational quantum algorithms rely on the optimization of parameterized quantum circuits in noisy settings. The commonly used back-propagation procedure in classical machine learning is not directly applicable in this setting due to the…
We consider a class of non-smooth strongly convex-strongly concave saddle point problems in a decentralized setting without a central server. To solve a consensus formulation of problems in this class, we develop an inexact primal dual…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a standard optimization method to minimize a training error with respect to network parameters in modern neural network learning. However, it typically suffers from proliferation of saddle points in the…
One of the most attractive recent approaches to processing well-structured large-scale convex optimization problems is based on smooth convex-concave saddle point reformu-lation of the problem of interest and solving the resulting problem…
Variational quantum algorithms are tailored to perform within the constraints of current quantum devices, yet they are limited by performance-degrading errors. In this study, we consider a noise model that reflects realistic gate errors…
We present a comprehensive theoretical analysis of first-order methods for escaping strict saddle points in smooth non-convex optimization. Our main contribution is a Perturbed Saddle-escape Descent (PSD) algorithm with fully explicit…
We consider the population Wasserstein barycenter problem for random probability measures supported on a finite set of points and generated by an online stream of data. This leads to a complicated stochastic optimization problem where the…
A broad class of hybrid quantum-classical algorithms known as "variational algorithms" have been proposed in the context of quantum simulation, machine learning, and combinatorial optimization as a means of potentially achieving a quantum…
This paper focuses on solving a stochastic saddle point problem (SPP) under an overparameterized regime for the case, when the gradient computation is impractical. As an intermediate step, we generalize Same-sample Stochastic Extra-gradient…
Privacy protection and nonconvexity are two challenging problems in decentralized optimization and learning involving sensitive data. Despite some recent advances addressing each of the two problems separately, no results have been reported…
We analyze stochastic gradient algorithms for optimizing nonconvex problems. In particular, our goal is to find local minima (second-order stationary points) instead of just finding first-order stationary points which may be some bad…