Related papers: The Continuous Stochastic Gradient Method: Part II…

A recent article introduced thecontinuous stochastic gradient method (CSG) for the efficient solution of a class of stochastic optimization problems. While the applicability of known stochastic gradient type methods is typically limited to…

In this contribution, we present a full overview of the continuous stochastic gradient (CSG) method, including convergence results, step size rules and algorithmic insights. We consider optimization problems in which the objective function…

Stochastic-gradient-based optimization has been a core enabling methodology in applications to large-scale problems in machine learning and related areas. Despite the progress, the gap between theory and practice remains significant, with…

We address the application of stochastic optimization methods for the simultaneous control of parameter-dependent systems. In particular, we focus on the classical Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) approach of Robbins and Monro, and on the…

SGD (Stochastic Gradient Descent) is a popular algorithm for large scale optimization problems due to its low iterative cost. However, SGD can not achieve linear convergence rate as FGD (Full Gradient Descent) because of the inherent…

Under mild assumptions stochastic gradient methods asymptotically achieve an optimal rate of convergence if the arithmetic mean of all iterates is returned as an approximate optimal solution. However, in the absence of stochastic noise, the…

We develop and analyze a procedure for gradient-based optimization that we refer to as stochastically controlled stochastic gradient (SCSG). As a member of the SVRG family of algorithms, SCSG makes use of gradient estimates at two scales,…

This paper presents an algorithmic framework for solving unconstrained stochastic optimization problems using only stochastic function evaluations. We employ central finite-difference based gradient estimation methods to approximate the…

We investigate the Randomized Stochastic Accelerated Gradient (RSAG) method, utilizing either constant or adaptive step sizes, for stochastic optimization problems with generalized smooth objective functions. Under relaxed affine variance…

In this paper, we introduce a new stochastic approximation (SA) type algorithm, namely the randomized stochastic gradient (RSG) method, for solving an important class of nonlinear (possibly nonconvex) stochastic programming (SP) problems.…

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) has been a go-to algorithm for nonconvex stochastic optimization problems arising in machine learning. Its theory however often requires a strong framework to guarantee convergence properties. We hereby…

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method is popular for solving non-convex optimization problems in machine learning. This work investigates SGD from a viewpoint of graduated optimization, which is a widely applied approach for non-convex…

Stochastic gradient descent is the method of choice for large-scale machine learning problems, by virtue of its light complexity per iteration. However, it lags behind its non-stochastic counterparts with respect to the convergence rate,…

Stochastic gradient methods are scalable for solving large-scale optimization problems that involve empirical expectations of loss functions. Existing results mainly apply to optimization problems where the objectives are one- or two-level…

We present and analyze several strategies for improving the performance of stochastic variance-reduced gradient (SVRG) methods. We first show that the convergence rate of these methods can be preserved under a decreasing sequence of errors…

We study finite-sum nonconvex optimization problems, where the objective function is an average of $n$ nonconvex functions. We propose a new stochastic gradient descent algorithm based on nested variance reduction. Compared with…

Stochastic computation graphs (SCGs) provide a formalism to represent structured optimization problems arising in artificial intelligence, including supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning. Previous work has shown that an…

Stochastic variance-reduced gradient (SVRG) is an optimization method originally designed for tackling machine learning problems with a finite sum structure. SVRG was later shown to work for policy evaluation, a problem in reinforcement…

Classical stochastic gradient methods are well suited for minimizing expected-value objective functions. However, they do not apply to the minimization of a nonlinear function involving expected values or a composition of two expected-value…

We propose a stochastic conditional gradient method (CGM) for minimizing convex finite-sum objectives formed as a sum of smooth and non-smooth terms. Existing CGM variants for this template either suffer from slow convergence rates, or…