Related papers: Improved dimension dependence of a proximal algori…
The Lasso has attracted the attention of many authors these last years. While many efforts have been made to prove that the Lasso behaves like a variable selection procedure at the price of strong (though unavoidable) assumptions on the…
Bayesian model selection provides a powerful framework for objectively comparing models directly from observed data, without reference to ground truth data. However, Bayesian model selection requires the computation of the marginal…
In this paper we address the convergence of stochastic approximation when the functions to be minimized are not convex and nonsmooth. We show that the "mean-limit" approach to the convergence which leads, for smooth problems, to the ODE…
We study the problem of sampling from a probability distribution $\pi$ on $\rset^d$ which has a density \wrt\ the Lebesgue measure known up to a normalization factor $x \mapsto \rme^{-U(x)} / \int_{\rset^d} \rme^{-U(y)} \rmd y$. We analyze…
Machine learning algorithms in high-dimensional settings are highly susceptible to the influence of even a small fraction of structured outliers, making robust optimization techniques essential. In particular, within the…
In order to solve tasks like uncertainty quantification or hypothesis tests in Bayesian imaging inverse problems, we often have to draw samples from the arising posterior distribution. For the usually log-concave but high-dimensional…
In this paper, we consider a class of structured nonconvex nonsmooth optimization problems, in which the objective function is formed by the sum of a possibly nonsmooth nonconvex function and a differentiable function whose gradient is…
We propose a new stochastic first-order algorithmic framework to solve stochastic composite nonconvex optimization problems that covers both finite-sum and expectation settings. Our algorithms rely on the SARAH estimator introduced in…
By leveraging differentiable dynamics, Reparameterization Policy Gradient (RPG) achieves high sample efficiency. However, current approaches are hindered by two critical limitations: the under-utilization of computationally expensive…
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 /…
Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization is one key technique for machine learning problems where gradient calculation is expensive or impossible. Several variance reduced ZO proximal algorithms have been proposed to speed up ZO optimization for…
We obtain an improved finite-sample guarantee on the linear convergence of stochastic gradient descent for smooth and strongly convex objectives, improving from a quadratic dependence on the conditioning $(L/\mu)^2$ (where $L$ is a bound on…
In this paper we analyze several inexact fast augmented Lagrangian methods for solving linearly constrained convex optimization problems. Mainly, our methods rely on the combination of excessive-gap-like smoothing technique developed in…
We analyse the convergence of an approximate, fully inexact, ADMM algorithm under additive, deterministic and probabilistic error models. We consider the generalized ADMM scheme that is derived from generalized Lagrangian penalty with…
Finite-sum optimization plays an important role in the area of machine learning, and hence has triggered a surge of interest in recent years. To address this optimization problem, various randomized incremental gradient methods have been…
We analyze worst-case complexity of a Proximal augmented Lagrangian (Proximal AL) framework for nonconvex optimization with nonlinear equality constraints. When an approximate first-order (second-order) optimal point is obtained in the…
We consider the problem of hypothesis testing for discrete distributions. In the standard model, where we have sample access to an underlying distribution $p$, extensive research has established optimal bounds for uniformity testing,…
We introduce a clipping strategy for Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) which uses quantiles of the gradient norm as clipping thresholds. We prove that this new strategy provides a robust and efficient optimization algorithm for smooth…
We propose an accelerated forward-backward method with fast convergence rate for finding a minimizer of a decomposable nonsmooth convex function over a closed convex set, and name it smoothing accelerated proximal gradient (SAPG) algorithm.…
Many large-scale and distributed optimization problems can be brought into a composite form in which the objective function is given by the sum of a smooth term and a nonsmooth regularizer. Such problems can be solved via a proximal…