Related papers: Descent modulus and applications

Based on a result by Taylor, Hendrickx, and Glineur (J. Optim. Theory Appl., 178(2):455--476, 2018) on the attainable convergence rate of gradient descent for smooth and strongly convex functions in terms of function values, an elementary…

This paper shows that a wide class of effective learning rules -- those that improve a scalar performance measure over a given time window -- can be rewritten as natural gradient descent with respect to a suitably defined loss function and…

In this paper, we study the asymptotic behavior of continuous- and discrete-time gradient flows of a ``lower-unbounded" convex function $f$ on a Hadamard manifold $M$, particularly, their convergence properties to the boundary $M^{\infty}$…

We prove the exact worst-case convergence rate of gradient descent for smooth strongly convex optimization on $\mathbb{R}^d$. Concretely, assuming that the objective function $f$ is $\mu$-strongly convex and $L$-smooth, we identify the…

We consider the minimization of non-convex quadratic forms regularized by a cubic term, which exhibit multiple saddle points and poor local minima. Nonetheless, we prove that, under mild assumptions, gradient descent approximates the…

We consider gradient descent with constant stepsizes and derive exact worst-case convergence rates on the minimum gradient norm of the iterates. Our analysis covers all possible stepsizes and arbitrary upper/lower bounds on the curvature of…

We prove the exact worst-case convergence rate of gradient descent for smooth strongly convex optimization, with respect to the performance criterion $\Vert \nabla f(x_N)\Vert^2/(f(x_0)-f_*)$. The proof differs from the previous one by…

In nonsmooth optimization, a negative subgradient is not necessarily a descent direction, making the design of convergent descent methods based on zeroth-order and first-order information a challenging task. The well-studied bundle methods…

Finding minima of a real valued non-convex function over a high dimensional space is a major challenge in science. We provide evidence that some such functions that are defined on high dimensional domains have a narrow band of values whose…

We consider gradient flow/gradient descent and heavy ball/accelerated gradient descent optimization for convex objective functions. In the gradient flow case, we prove the following: 1. If $f$ does not have a minimizer, the convergence…

Fractional derivatives are a well-studied generalization of integer order derivatives. Naturally, for optimization, it is of interest to understand the convergence properties of gradient descent using fractional derivatives. Convergence…

For strongly convex objectives that are smooth, the classical theory of gradient descent ensures linear convergence relative to the number of gradient evaluations. An analogous nonsmooth theory is challenging. Even when the objective is…

We study the minimization of a convex function $f(X)$ over the set of $n\times n$ positive semi-definite matrices, but when the problem is recast as $\min_U g(U) := f(UU^\top)$, with $U \in \mathbb{R}^{n \times r}$ and $r \leq n$. We study…

We study the classical optimization problem $\min_{x \in \mathbb{R}^d} f(x)$ and analyze the gradient descent (GD) method in both nonconvex and convex settings. It is well-known that, under the $L$-smoothness assumption ($\|\nabla^2 f(x)\|…

Gradient descent, or negative gradient flow, is a standard technique in optimization to find minima of functions. Many implementations of gradient descent rely on discretized versions, i.e., moving in the gradient direction for a set step…

Given a non-convex twice differentiable cost function f, we prove that the set of initial conditions so that gradient descent converges to saddle points where \nabla^2 f has at least one strictly negative eigenvalue has (Lebesgue) measure…

Consider the problem of minimizing functions that are Lipschitz and strongly convex, but not necessarily differentiable. We prove that after $T$ steps of stochastic gradient descent, the error of the final iterate is $O(\log(T)/T)$ with…

We study gradient testing and gradient estimation of smooth functions using only a comparison oracle that, given two points, indicates which one has the larger function value. For any smooth $f\colon\mathbb R^n\to\mathbb R$,…

The study of first-order optimization is sensitive to the assumptions made on the objective functions. These assumptions induce complexity classes which play a key role in worst-case analysis, including the fundamental concept of algorithm…

We develop a new proximal-gradient method for minimizing the sum of a differentiable, possibly nonconvex, function plus a convex, possibly non differentiable, function. The key features of the proposed method are the definition of a…