Related papers: Optimal Stochastic Non-smooth Non-convex Optimizat…
We study differentially private (DP) optimization algorithms for stochastic and empirical objectives which are neither smooth nor convex, and propose methods that return a Goldstein-stationary point with sample complexity bounds that…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) has played a central role in machine learning. However, it requires a carefully hand-picked stepsize for fast convergence, which is notoriously tedious and time-consuming to tune. Over the last several…
We study the secure stochastic convex optimization problem. A learner aims to learn the optimal point of a convex function through sequentially querying a (stochastic) gradient oracle. In the meantime, there exists an adversary who aims to…
Constrained optimization problems where both the objective and constraints may be nonsmooth and nonconvex arise across many learning and data science settings. In this paper, we show for any Lipschitz, weakly convex objectives and…
In this paper, we consider a broad class of nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization problems, where one objective component is a nonsmooth weakly convex function composed with a linear operator. By integrating variable smoothing techniques…
Decentralized nonconvex optimization has received increasing attention in recent years in machine learning due to its advantages in system robustness, data privacy, and implementation simplicity. However, three fundamental challenges in…
The minimization of convex functions which are only available through partial and noisy information is a key methodological problem in many disciplines. In this paper we consider convex optimization with noisy zero-th order information,…
Randomly initialized first-order optimization algorithms are the method of choice for solving many high-dimensional nonconvex problems in machine learning, yet general theoretical guarantees cannot rule out convergence to critical points of…
Applications involving dictionary learning, non-negative matrix factorization, subspace clustering, and parallel factor tensor decomposition tasks motivate well algorithms for per-block-convex and non-smooth optimization problems. By…
We propose an adaptive smoothing algorithm based on Nesterov's smoothing technique in \cite{Nesterov2005c} for solving "fully" nonsmooth composite convex optimization problems. Our method combines both Nesterov's accelerated proximal…
We propose smoothed primal-dual algorithms for solving stochastic and smooth nonconvex optimization problems with linear inequality constraints. Our algorithms are single-loop and only require a single stochastic gradient based on one…
We propose a primal-dual smoothing framework for finding a near-stationary point of a class of non-smooth non-convex optimization problems with max-structure. We analyze the primal and dual gradient complexities of the framework via two…
The use of min-max optimization in adversarial training of deep neural network classifiers and training of generative adversarial networks has motivated the study of nonconvex-nonconcave optimization objectives, which frequently arise in…
Optimization of convex functions under stochastic zeroth-order feedback has been a major and challenging question in online learning. In this work, we consider the problem of optimizing second-order smooth and strongly convex functions…
We consider minimization of a smooth nonconvex objective function using an iterative algorithm based on Newton's method and the linear conjugate gradient algorithm, with explicit detection and use of negative curvature directions for the…
We consider the problem of global optimization of an unknown non-convex smooth function with zeroth-order feedback. In this setup, an algorithm is allowed to adaptively query the underlying function at different locations and receives noisy…
In Online Convex Optimization (OCO), when the stochastic gradient has a finite variance, many algorithms provably work and guarantee a sublinear regret. However, limited results are known if the gradient estimate has a heavy tail, i.e., the…
This paper studies online nonstochastic control problems with adversarial and static constraints. We propose online nonstochastic control algorithms that achieve both sublinear regret and sublinear adversarial constraint violation while…
We propose two new alternating direction methods to solve "fully" nonsmooth constrained convex problems. Our algorithms have the best known worst-case iteration-complexity guarantee under mild assumptions for both the objective residual and…
Randomized smoothing is a widely adopted technique for optimizing nonsmooth objective functions. However, its efficiency analysis typically relies on global Lipschitz continuity, a condition rarely met in practical applications. To address…