Related papers: An Optimal Structured Zeroth-order Algorithm for N…
Many important machine learning applications involve regularized nonconvex bi-level optimization. However, the existing gradient-based bi-level optimization algorithms cannot handle nonconvex or nonsmooth regularizers, and they suffer from…
In this paper, we propose a proximal gradient method and an accelerated proximal gradient method for solving composite optimization problems, where the objective function is the sum of a smooth and a convex, possibly nonsmooth, function. We…
Nonsmooth nonconvex optimization problems broadly emerge in machine learning and business decision making, whereas two core challenges impede the development of efficient solution methods with finite-time convergence guarantee: the lack of…
Two types of zeroth-order stochastic algorithms have recently been designed for nonconvex optimization respectively based on the first-order techniques SVRG and SARAH/SPIDER. This paper addresses several important issues that are still open…
We investigate the finite-time analysis of finding ($\delta,\epsilon$)-stationary points for nonsmooth nonconvex objectives in decentralized stochastic optimization. A set of agents aim at minimizing a global function using only their local…
This paper optimizes the step coefficients of first-order methods for smooth convex minimization in terms of the worst-case convergence bound (i.e., efficiency) of the decrease in the gradient norm. This work is based on the performance…
Many recent studies on first-order methods (FOMs) focus on \emph{composite non-convex non-smooth} optimization with linear and/or nonlinear function constraints. Upper (or worst-case) complexity bounds have been established for these…
This paper considers the problem of unconstrained minimization of smooth convex functions having Lipschitz continuous gradients with known Lipschitz constant. We recently proposed an optimized gradient method (OGM) for this problem and…
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.…
This paper introduces a class of model-free feedback methods for solving generic constrained optimization problems where the specific mathematical forms of the objective and constraint functions are not available. The proposed methods,…
We consider the problem of optimizing the sum of a smooth convex function and a non-smooth convex function using proximal-gradient methods, where an error is present in the calculation of the gradient of the smooth term or in the proximity…
In this paper, we propose objective-function-free (OFF) variants of the proximal Newton method for nonconvex composite optimization problems and the regularized Newton method for unconstrained optimization problems, respectively, using…
We develop a trust-region method for efficiently minimizing the sum of a smooth function, a nonsmooth convex function, and the composition of a finite-valued support function with a smooth function. Optimization problems with this structure…
The minimization of convex functions which are only available through partial and noisy information is a key methodological problem in many disciplines. In this paper we consider convex optimization with noisy zero-th order information,…
In this paper, we propose a new method based on the Sliding Algorithm from Lan(2016, 2019) for the convex composite optimization problem that includes two terms: smooth one and non-smooth one. Our method uses the stochastic noised…
This paper addresses black-box smooth optimization problems, where the objective and constraint functions are not explicitly known but can be queried. The main goal of this work is to generate a sequence of feasible points converging…
This paper proposes and develops new Newton-type methods to solve structured nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization problems with justifying their fast local and global convergence by means of advanced tools of variational analysis and…
Several low-bandwidth distributable black-box optimization algorithms in the family of finite differences such as Evolution Strategies have recently been shown to perform nearly as well as tailored Reinforcement Learning methods in some…
Nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization problems are frequently encountered in much of statistics, business, science and engineering, but they are not yet widely recognized as a technology in the sense of scalability. A reason for this…
In this paper, we present several new results on minimizing a nonsmooth and nonconvex function under a Lipschitz condition. Recent work shows that while the classical notion of Clarke stationarity is computationally intractable up to some…