Related papers: Random Function Descent
We show that for separable convex optimization, random stepsizes fully accelerate Gradient Descent. Specifically, using inverse stepsizes i.i.d. from the Arcsine distribution improves the iteration complexity from $O(k)$ to $O(k^{1/2})$,…
Fractional Gradient Descent (FGD) offers a novel and promising way to accelerate optimization by incorporating fractional calculus into machine learning. Although FGD has shown encouraging initial results across various optimization tasks,…
The graduated optimization approach, also known as the continuation method, is a popular heuristic to solving non-convex problems that has received renewed interest over the last decade. Despite its popularity, very little is known in terms…
Gradient methods are among the simplest yet most widely used algorithms for unconstrained optimization. Motivated by a geometric property of the steepest descent (SD) method that can alleviate the zigzag behavior in quadratic problems, we…
Selecting an effective step-size is a fundamental challenge in first-order optimization, especially for problems with non-Euclidean geometries. This paper presents a novel adaptive step-size strategy for optimization algorithms that rely on…
This paper proposes a stochastic variant of a classic algorithm---the cubic-regularized Newton method [Nesterov and Polyak 2006]. The proposed algorithm efficiently escapes saddle points and finds approximate local minima for general…
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…
This paper addresses the question of whether it can be beneficial for an optimization algorithm to follow directions of negative curvature. Although prior work has established convergence results for algorithms that integrate both descent…
We consider machine learning tasks with low-rank functional tree tensor networks (TTN) as the learning model. While in the case of least-squares regression, low-rank functional TTNs can be efficiently optimized using alternating…
In this paper we analyze several new methods for solving nonconvex optimization problems with the objective function formed as a sum of two terms: one is nonconvex and smooth, and another is convex but simple and its structure is known.…
Reliability-based topology optimization (RBTO) requires repeated estimation of small failure probabilities and their gradients, making conventional nested Monte Carlo approaches computationally prohibitive for large scale structural…
We study a fixed step-size noisy distributed gradient descent algorithm for solving optimization problems in which the objective is a finite sum of smooth but possibly non-convex functions. Random perturbations are introduced to the…
We develop and analyse an approach to optimize functions $l\colon \mathbb{R}^d \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ not assumed to be convex, differentiable or even continuous. The algorithm belongs to the class of model-based search methods. The idea…
We consider the stochastic gradient method with random reshuffling ($\mathsf{RR}$) for tackling smooth nonconvex optimization problems. $\mathsf{RR}$ finds broad applications in practice, notably in training neural networks. In this work,…
Bayesian inference plays an important role in advancing machine learning, but faces computational challenges when applied to complex models such as deep neural networks. Variational inference circumvents these challenges by formulating…
Mirror Descent (MD) is a scalable first-order method widely used in large-scale optimization, with applications in image processing, policy optimization, and neural network training. This paper generalizes MD to optimization on Riemannian…
We consider a regularized expected reward optimization problem in the non-oblivious setting that covers many existing problems in reinforcement learning (RL). In order to solve such an optimization problem, we apply and analyze the…
Randomized Fast Subspace Descent (RFASD) Methods are developed and analyzed for smooth and non-constraint convex optimization problems. The efficiency of the method relies on a space decomposition which is stable in $A$-norm, and meanwhile,…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) gives an optimal convergence rate when minimizing convex stochastic objectives $f(x)$. However, in terms of making the gradients small, the original SGD does not give an optimal rate, even when $f(x)$ is…
Stochastic optimization algorithms with variance reduction have proven successful for minimizing large finite sums of functions. Unfortunately, these techniques are unable to deal with stochastic perturbations of input data, induced for…