Related papers: Accelerated Zero-Order SGD Method for Solving the …
We introduce a clipping strategy for Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) which uses quantiles of the gradient norm as clipping thresholds. We prove that this new strategy provides a robust and efficient optimization algorithm for smooth…
We present a uniform analysis of biased stochastic gradient methods for minimizing convex, strongly convex, and non-convex composite objectives, and identify settings where bias is useful in stochastic gradient estimation. The framework we…
Stochastic optimization problems with unknown decision-dependent distributions have attracted increasing attention in recent years due to its importance in applications. Since the gradient of the objective function is inaccessible as a…
In this work we consider the stochastic minimization of nonsmooth convex loss functions, a central problem in machine learning. We propose a novel algorithm called Accelerated Nonsmooth Stochastic Gradient Descent (ANSGD), which exploits…
Interest in stochastic zeroth-order (SZO) methods has recently been revived in black-box optimization scenarios such as adversarial black-box attacks to deep neural networks. SZO methods only require the ability to evaluate the objective…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) has been a go-to algorithm for nonconvex stochastic optimization problems arising in machine learning. Its theory however often requires a strong framework to guarantee convergence properties. We hereby…
This paper considers decentralized stochastic optimization over a network of $n$ nodes, where each node possesses a smooth non-convex local cost function and the goal of the networked nodes is to find an $\epsilon$-accurate first-order…
In this work, we propose a stochastic gradient descent (SGD) framework to design data-driven policy gradient descent algorithms for the linear quadratic regulator problem. Two alternative schemes are considered to estimate the policy…
We introduce a novel and efficient algorithm called the stochastic approximate gradient descent (SAGD), as an alternative to the stochastic gradient descent for cases where unbiased stochastic gradients cannot be trivially obtained.…
A parametric class of trust-region algorithms for unconstrained nonconvex optimization is considered where the value of the objective function is never computed. The class contains a deterministic version of the first-order Adagrad method…
We consider stochastic convex optimization problems with affine constraints and develop several methods using either primal or dual approach to solve it. In the primal case, we use a special penalization technique to make the initial…
We propose a stochastic conditional gradient method (CGM) for minimizing convex finite-sum objectives formed as a sum of smooth and non-smooth terms. Existing CGM variants for this template either suffer from slow convergence rates, or…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) optimization methods are nowadays the method of choice for the training of deep neural networks (DNNs) in artificial intelligence systems. In practically relevant training problems, usually not the plain…
Black-box optimization is primarily important for many compute-intensive applications, including reinforcement learning (RL), robot control, etc. This paper presents a novel theoretical framework for black-box optimization, in which our…
Gradient descent and its variants are widely used in machine learning. However, oracle access of gradient may not be available in many applications, limiting the direct use of gradient descent. This paper proposes a method of estimating…
We introduce a new adaptive step-size strategy for convex optimization with stochastic gradient that exploits the local geometry of the objective function only by means of a first-order stochastic oracle and without any hyper-parameter…
Line search (or backtracking) procedures have been widely employed into first-order methods for solving convex optimization problems, especially those with unknown problem parameters (e.g., Lipschitz constant). In this paper, we show that…
In this paper, we consider smooth convex optimization problems with simple constraints and inexactness in the oracle information such as value, partial or directional derivatives of the objective function. We introduce a unifying framework,…
Adaptive gradient algorithms perform gradient-based updates using the history of gradients and are ubiquitous in training deep neural networks. While adaptive gradient methods theory is well understood for minimization problems, the…
We study the first-order convex optimization problem, where we have black-box access to a (not necessarily smooth) function $f:\mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}$ and its (sub)gradient. Our goal is to find an $\epsilon$-approximate minimum of $f$…