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Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is an out-of-equilibrium algorithm used extensively to train artificial neural networks. However very little is known on to what extent SGD is crucial for to the success of this technology and, in…
We consider a variable metric linesearch based proximal gradient method for the minimization of the sum of a smooth, possibly nonconvex function plus a convex, possibly nonsmooth term. We prove convergence of this iterative algorithm to a…
The article discusses distributed gradient-descent algorithms for computing local and global minima in nonconvex optimization. For local optimization, we focus on distributed stochastic gradient descent (D-SGD)--a simple network-based…
We study the iteration complexity of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for minimizing the gradient norm of smooth, possibly nonconvex functions. We provide several results, implying that the $\mathcal{O}(\epsilon^{-4})$ upper bound of…
This paper studies distributed nonconvex optimization problems with stochastic gradients for a multi-agent system, in which each agent aims to minimize the sum of all agents' cost functions by using local compressed information exchange. We…
In this paper, we present a stochastic gradient algorithm for minimizing a smooth objective function that is an expectation over noisy cost samples, and only the latter are observed for any given parameter. Our algorithm employs a gradient…
We establish novel generalization bounds for learning algorithms that converge to global minima. We do so by deriving black-box stability results that only depend on the convergence of a learning algorithm and the geometry around the…
Recently, Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) and its variants have become the dominant methods in the large-scale optimization of machine learning (ML) problems. A variety of strategies have been proposed for tuning the step sizes, ranging…
We study to what extent may stochastic gradient descent (SGD) be understood as a "conventional" learning rule that achieves generalization performance by obtaining a good fit to training data. We consider the fundamental stochastic convex…
The stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm has been widely used in statistical estimation for large-scale data due to its computational and memory efficiency. While most existing works focus on the convergence of the objective function…
In this paper, we study the performance of a large family of SGD variants in the smooth nonconvex regime. To this end, we propose a generic and flexible assumption capable of accurate modeling of the second moment of the stochastic…
We study stochastic algorithms for solving nonconvex optimization problems with a convex yet possibly nonsmooth regularizer, which find wide applications in many practical machine learning applications. However, compared to asynchronous…
Classical stochastic gradient methods are well suited for minimizing expected-value objective functions. However, they do not apply to the minimization of a nonlinear function involving expected values or a composition of two expected-value…
In this paper, we consider a general stochastic optimization problem which is often at the core of supervised learning, such as deep learning and linear classification. We consider a standard stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method with a…
This paper addresses the study of derivative-free smooth optimization problems, where the gradient information on the objective function is unavailable. Two novel general derivative-free methods are proposed and developed for minimizing…
Classical assumptions like strong convexity and Lipschitz smoothness often fail to capture the nature of deep learning optimization problems, which are typically non-convex and non-smooth, making traditional analyses less applicable. This…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a standard optimization method to minimize a training error with respect to network parameters in modern neural network learning. However, it typically suffers from proliferation of saddle points in the…
This paper studies a risk minimization problem with decision dependent data distribution. The problem pertains to the performative prediction setting in which a trained model can affect the outcome estimated by the model. Such dependency…
The graduated optimization approach is a method for finding global optimal solutions for nonconvex functions by using a function smoothing operation with stochastic noise. This paper makes three contributions regarding graduated…
We study the Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) method in nonconvex optimization problems from the point of view of approximating diffusion processes. We prove rigorously that the diffusion process can approximate the SGD algorithm weakly…