Related papers: Sample Average Approximation for Black-Box VI
Traditionally, stochastic approximation schemes for SVIs have relied on strong monotonicity and Lipschitzian properties of the underlying map. In contrast, we consider monotone stochastic variational inequality (SVI) problems where the…
We consider optimal allocation problems with Conditional Value-At-Risk (CVaR) constraint. We prove, under very mild assumptions, the convergence of the Sample Average Approximation method (SAA) applied to this problem, and we also exhibit a…
Stochastic approximation Monte Carlo (SAMC) has recently been proposed by Liang, Liu and Carroll [J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 102 (2007) 305--320] as a general simulation and optimization algorithm. In this paper, we propose to improve its…
A framework is introduced for solving a sequence of slowly changing optimization problems, including those arising in regression and classification applications, using optimization algorithms such as stochastic gradient descent (SGD). The…
Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) is a framework for performing likelihood-free posterior inference for simulation models. Stochastic Variational inference (SVI) is an appealing alternative to the inefficient sampling approaches…
We propose a statistical adaptive procedure called SALSA for automatically scheduling the learning rate (step size) in stochastic gradient methods. SALSA first uses a smoothed stochastic line-search procedure to gradually increase the…
The approximation of a high-dimensional vector by a small combination of column vectors selected from a fixed matrix has been actively debated in several different disciplines. In this paper, a sampling approach based on the Monte Carlo…
Stochastic Approximation (SA) is a classical algorithm that has had since the early days a huge impact on signal processing, and nowadays on machine learning, due to the necessity to deal with a large amount of data observed with…
Trajectory optimization under uncertainty underpins a wide range of applications in robotics. However, existing methods are limited in terms of reasoning about sources of epistemic and aleatoric uncertainty, space and time correlations,…
Stochastic approximation is a foundation for many algorithms found in machine learning and optimization. It is in general slow to converge: the mean square error vanishes as $O(n^{-1})$. A deterministic counterpart known as quasi-stochastic…
We propose a black-box approach to reducing large semidefinite programs to a set of smaller semidefinite programs by projecting to random linear subspaces. We evaluate our method on a set of polynomial optimization problems, demonstrating…
This paper considers the stochastic convex composite optimization problem and presents multi-cut stochastic approximation (SA) methods for solving it, whose models in expectation overestimate its objective function. The multi-cut model…
Optimization problems with the objective function in the form of weighted sum and linear equality constraints are considered. Given that the number of local cost functions can be large as well as the number of constraints, a stochastic…
We introduce a new method for solving nonlinear continuous optimization problems with chance constraints. Our method is based on a reformulation of the probabilistic constraint as a quantile function. The quantile function is approximated…
We propose a novel algorithm for solving non-convex, nonlinear equality-constrained finite-sum optimization problems. The proposed algorithm incorporates an additional sampling strategy for sample size update into the well-known framework…
We study statistical properties of the optimal value of the Sample Average Approximation. The focus is on the tail function of the absolute error induced by the Sample Average Approximation, deriving upper estimates of its outcomes…
Derivative-free optimization has become an important technique used in machine learning for optimizing black-box models. To conduct updates without explicitly computing gradient, most current approaches iteratively sample a random search…
In this paper, we evaluate stochastic-computing simulated annealing (SC-SA) for solving large-scale combinatorial optimization problems. SC-SA is designed using stochastic computing, where the computatoin is reazlied using random bitstream,…
For many decades now, Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) has been a popular framework to systematically account for model uncertainty that arises in situations when multiple competing models are available to describe the same or similar…
In this paper, we consider constrained optimization problems with convex, smooth objective and constraints. We propose a new stochastic gradient algorithm, called the Stochastic Moving Ball Approximation (SMBA) method, to solve this class…