Related papers: Near-Optimal Non-Convex Stochastic Optimization un…

A standard way to obtain convergence guarantees in stochastic convex optimization is to run an online learning algorithm and then output the average of its iterates: the actual iterates of the online learning algorithm do not come with…

Stochastic composition optimization draws much attention recently and has been successful in many emerging applications of machine learning, statistical analysis, and reinforcement learning. In this paper, we focus on the composition…

In this work, we present a globalized stochastic semismooth Newton method for solving stochastic optimization problems involving smooth nonconvex and nonsmooth convex terms in the objective function. We assume that only noisy gradient and…

STOchastic Recursive Momentum (STORM)-based algorithms have been widely developed to solve one to $K$-level ($K \geq 3$) stochastic optimization problems. Specifically, they use estimators to mitigate the biased gradient issue and achieve…

In this paper, we consider the problem of minimizing the average of a large number of nonsmooth and convex functions. Such problems often arise in typical machine learning problems as empirical risk minimization, but are computationally…

This paper proposes a novel technique called "successive stochastic smoothing" that optimizes nonsmooth and discontinuous functions while considering various constraints. Our methodology enables local and global optimization, making it a…

We study a class of non-convex and non-smooth problems with \textit{rank} regularization to promote sparsity in optimal solution. We propose to apply the proximal gradient descent method to solve the problem and accelerate the process with…

The paper proposes and justifies a new algorithm of the proximal Newton type to solve a broad class of nonsmooth composite convex optimization problems without strong convexity assumptions. Based on advanced notions and techniques of…

We study the problem of sampling from a $d$-dimensional distribution with density $p(x)\propto e^{-f(x)}$, which does not necessarily satisfy good isoperimetric conditions. Specifically, we show that for any $L,M$ satisfying $LM\ge d\ge 5$,…

In this paper, we present several new results on minimizing a nonsmooth and nonconvex function under a Lipschitz condition. Recent work shows that while the classical notion of Clarke stationarity is computationally intractable up to some…

This paper studies first order methods for solving smooth minimax optimization problems $\min_x \max_y g(x,y)$ where $g(\cdot,\cdot)$ is smooth and $g(x,\cdot)$ is concave for each $x$. In terms of $g(\cdot,y)$, we consider two settings --…

We study stochastic zeroth-order optimization with decision-dependent distributions, where the sampling law depends on the current decision and only noisy function values are available. For the non-smooth non-convex setting, we establish an…

An algorithm is proposed, analyzed, and tested for minimizing locally Lipschitz objective functions that may be nonconvex and/or nonsmooth. The algorithm, which is built upon the gradient-sampling methodology, is designed specifically for…

Non-convex Machine Learning problems typically do not adhere to the standard smoothness assumption. Based on empirical findings, Zhang et al. (2020b) proposed a more realistic generalized $(L_0, L_1)$-smoothness assumption, though it…

In this work, we consider convex optimization problems with smooth objective function and nonsmooth functional constraints. We propose a new stochastic gradient algorithm, called Stochastic Halfspace Approximation Method (SHAM), to solve…

We present the first efficient averaging sampler that achieves asymptotically optimal randomness complexity and near-optimal sample complexity. For any $\delta < \varepsilon$ and any constant $\alpha > 0$, our sampler uses $m + O(\log (1 /…

This paper considers stochastic first-order algorithms for convex-concave minimax problems of the form $\min_{\bf x}\max_{\bf y}f(\bf x, \bf y)$, where $f$ can be presented by the average of $n$ individual components which are $L$-average…

Traditional algorithms for stochastic optimization require projecting the solution at each iteration into a given domain to ensure its feasibility. When facing complex domains, such as positive semi-definite cones, the projection operation…

Stochastic optimization has found wide applications in minimizing objective functions in machine learning, which motivates a lot of theoretical studies to understand its practical success. Most of existing studies focus on the convergence…

We revisit the classical problem of finding an approximately stationary point of the average of $n$ smooth and possibly nonconvex functions. The optimal complexity of stochastic first-order methods in terms of the number of gradient…