Related papers: Local Limit Theorems and Strong Approximations for…
The Robbins-Monro algorithm is a recursive, simulation-based stochastic procedure to approximate the zeros of a function that can be written as an expectation. It is known that under some technical assumptions, a Gaussian convergence can be…
The need for parameter estimation with massive datasets has reinvigorated interest in stochastic optimization and iterative estimation procedures. Stochastic approximations are at the forefront of this recent development as they yield…
The Robbins-Monro stochastic approximation algorithm is a foundation of many algorithmic frameworks for reinforcement learning (RL), and often an efficient approach to solving (or approximating the solution to) complex optimal control…
We study the convergence rate of randomly truncated stochastic algorithms, which consist in the truncation of the standard Robbins-Monro procedure on an increasing sequence of compact sets. Such a truncation is often required in practice to…
We study the convergence rate of randomly truncated stochastic algorithms, which consist in the truncation of the standard Robbins-Monro procedure on an increasing sequence of compact sets. Such a truncation is often required in practice to…
This paper is devoted to two different two-time-scale stochastic approximation algorithms for superquantile estimation. We shall investigate the asymptotic behavior of a Robbins-Monro estimator and its convexified version. Our main…
This paper studies a method, which has been proposed in the Physics literature by [8, 7, 10], for estimating the quasi-stationary distribution. In contrast to existing methods in eigenvector estimation, the method eliminates the need for…
In this paper, we analyze the convergence of a distributed Robbins-Monro algorithm for both constrained and unconstrained optimization in multi-agent systems. The algorithm searches for local minima of a (nonconvex) objective function which…
Stochastic approximation algorithms are iterative procedures which are used to approximate a target value in an environment where the target is unknown and direct observations are corrupted by noise. These algorithms are useful, for…
One way of getting insight into non-Gaussian measures, posed on infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces, is to first obtain best fit Gaussian approximations, which are more amenable to numerical approximation. These Gaussians can then be used…
We study the Robbins-Monro stochastic approximation algorithm with projections on a hyperrectangle and prove its convergence. This work fills a gap in the convergence proof of the classic book by Kushner and Yin. Using the ODE method, we…
We propose a new method to improve the convergence speed of the Robbins-Monro algorithm by introducing prior information about the target point into the Robbins-Monro iteration. We achieve the incorporation of prior information without the…
The problem of estimating certain distributions over $\{0,1\}^d$ is considered here. The distribution represents a quantum system of $d$ qubits, where there are non-trivial dependencies between the qubits. A maximum entropy approach is…
We propose an unconstrained stochastic approximation method of finding the optimal measure change (in an a priori parametric family) for Monte Carlo simulations. We consider different parametric families based on the Girsanov theorem and…
We present an adaptive method for the automatic scaling of Random-Walk Metropolis-Hastings algorithms, which quickly and robustly identifies the scaling factor that yields a specified overall sampler acceptance probability. Our method…
Motivated by the goal of improving the efficiency of small sample design, we propose a novel Bayesian stochastic approximation method to estimate the root of a regression function. The method features adaptive local modelling and…
We introduce Sequential Probability Ratio Bisection (SPRB), a novel stochastic approximation algorithm that adapts to the local behavior of the (regression) function of interest around its root. We establish theoretical guarantees for…
The Robbins-Siegmund theorem is one of the most important results in stochastic optimization, where it is widely used to prove the convergence of stochastic algorithms. We provide a quantitative version of the theorem, establishing a bound…
The paper is devoted to the study of a parametric deformation model of independent and identically random variables. Firstly, we construct an efficient and very easy to compute recursive estimate of the parameter. Our stochastic estimator…
This paper addresses second-order stochastic optimization for estimating the minimizer of a convex function written as an expectation. A direct recursive estimation technique for the inverse Hessian matrix using a Robbins-Monro procedure is…