Related papers: Calm local optimality for nonconvex-nonconcave min…
Constrained Optimization solution algorithms are restricted to point based solutions. In practice, single or multiple objectives must be satisfied, wherein both the objective function and constraints can be non-convex resulting in multiple…
Motivated by recent increased interest in optimization algorithms for non-convex optimization in application to training deep neural networks and other optimization problems in data analysis, we give an overview of recent theoretical…
We study the problem of finding approximate first-order stationary points in optimization problems of the form $\min_{x \in X} \max_{y \in Y} f(x,y)$, where the sets $X,Y$ are convex and $Y$ is compact. The objective function $f$ is smooth,…
Deciding whether saddle points exist or are approximable for nonconvex-nonconcave problems is usually intractable. This paper takes a step towards understanding a broad class of nonconvex-nonconcave minimax problems that do remain…
This paper considers stochastic first-order algorithms for convex-concave minimax problems of the form $\min_{\bf x}\max_{\bf y}f(\bf x, \bf y)$, where $f$ can be presented by the average of $n$ individual components which are $L$-average…
Constrained non-convex optimization is fundamentally challenging, as global solutions are generally intractable and constraint qualifications may not hold. However, in many applications, including safe policy optimization in control 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.…
Convex-concave min-max problems are ubiquitous in machine learning, and people usually utilize first-order methods (e.g., gradient descent ascent) to find the optimal solution. One feature which separates convex-concave min-max problems…
We provide a first-order oracle complexity lower bound for finding stationary points of min-max optimization problems where the objective function is smooth, nonconvex in the minimization variable, and strongly concave in the maximization…
It is well-known that given a smooth, bounded-from-below, and possibly nonconvex function, standard gradient-based methods can find $\epsilon$-stationary points (with gradient norm less than $\epsilon$) in $\mathcal{O}(1/\epsilon^2)$…
The minimax theory for estimating linear functionals is extended to the case of a finite union of convex parameter spaces. Upper and lower bounds for the minimax risk can still be described in terms of a modulus of continuity. However in…
This article considers nonconvex global optimization problems subject to uncertainties described by continuous random variables. Such problems arise in chemical process design, renewable energy systems, stochastic model predictive control,…
Smooth finite-sum optimization has been widely studied in both convex and nonconvex settings. However, existing lower bounds for finite-sum optimization are mostly limited to the setting where each component function is (strongly) convex,…
We consider the problem of minimizing a continuous function given quantum access to a stochastic gradient oracle. We provide two new methods for the special case of minimizing a Lipschitz convex function. Each method obtains a dimension…
Many problems of substantial current interest in machine learning, statistics, and data science can be formulated as sparse and low-rank optimization problems. In this paper, we present the nonconvex exterior-point optimization solver NExOS…
Minimax problems have recently attracted a lot of research interests. A few efforts have been made to solve decentralized nonconvex strongly-concave (NCSC) minimax-structured optimization; however, all of them focus on smooth problems with…
Bilevel optimization has witnessed a resurgence of interest, driven by its critical role in trustworthy and efficient AI applications. While many recent works have established convergence to stationary points or local minima, obtaining the…
This paper proposes and analyzes a communication-efficient distributed optimization framework for general nonconvex nonsmooth signal processing and machine learning problems under an asynchronous protocol. At each iteration, worker machines…
We study local complexity measures for stochastic convex optimization problems, providing a local minimax theory analogous to that of H\'{a}jek and Le Cam for classical statistical problems. We give complementary optimality results,…
Approximations of optimization problems arise in computational procedures and sensitivity analysis. The resulting effect on solutions can be significant, with even small approximations of components of a problem translating into large…