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In Online Convex Optimization (OCO), when the stochastic gradient has a finite variance, many algorithms provably work and guarantee a sublinear regret. However, limited results are known if the gradient estimate has a heavy tail, i.e., the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-20 Zijian Liu

We study nonlinearly preconditioned gradient methods for smooth nonconvex optimization problems, focusing on sigmoid preconditioners that inherently perform a form of gradient clipping akin to the widely used gradient clipping technique.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-14 Konstantinos Oikonomidis , Jan Quan , Panagiotis Patrinos

We study high-probability convergence guarantees of learning on streaming data in the presence of heavy-tailed noise. In the proposed scenario, the model is updated in an online fashion, as new information is observed, without storing any…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-02 Aleksandar Armacki , Pranay Sharma , Gauri Joshi , Dragana Bajovic , Dusan Jakovetic , Soummya Kar

Choosing the optimization algorithm that performs best on a given machine learning problem is often delicate, and there is no guarantee that current state-of-the-art algorithms will perform well across all tasks. Consequently, the more…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-25 Måns Williamson , Monika Eisenmann , Tony Stillfjord

We study convex optimization problems under differential privacy (DP). With heavy-tailed gradients, existing works achieve suboptimal rates. The main obstacle is that existing gradient estimators have suboptimal tail properties, resulting…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-20 Puning Zhao , Jiafei Wu , Zhe Liu , Chong Wang , Rongfei Fan , Qingming Li

Stochastic gradient algorithms are often unstable when applied to functions that do not have Lipschitz-continuous and/or bounded gradients. Gradient clipping is a simple and effective technique to stabilize the training process for problems…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-06-11 Vien V. Mai , Mikael Johansson

Recently, the study of heavy-tailed noises in first-order nonconvex stochastic optimization has gotten a lot of attention since it was recognized as a more realistic condition as suggested by many empirical observations. Specifically, the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-30 Zijian Liu , Zhengyuan Zhou

There are several applications of stochastic optimization where one can benefit from a robust estimate of the gradient. For example, domains such as distributed learning with corrupted nodes, the presence of large outliers in the training…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-30 Fabian Schaipp , Guillaume Garrigos , Umut Simsekli , Robert Gower

In this work we study high probability bounds for stochastic subgradient methods under heavy tailed noise. In this setting the noise is only assumed to have finite variance as opposed to a sub-Gaussian distribution for which it is known…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-04-16 Daniela A. Parletta , Andrea Paudice , Massimiliano Pontil , Saverio Salzo

Classical analysis of convex and non-convex optimization methods often requires the Lipshitzness of the gradient, which limits the analysis to functions bounded by quadratics. Recent work relaxed this requirement to a non-uniform smoothness…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-06 Haochuan Li , Jian Qian , Yi Tian , Alexander Rakhlin , Ali Jadbabaie

Gradient clipping is a widely used technique in Machine Learning and Deep Learning (DL), known for its effectiveness in mitigating the impact of heavy-tailed noise, which frequently arises in the training of large language models.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-30 Savelii Chezhegov , Aleksandr Beznosikov , Samuel Horváth , Eduard Gorbunov

Stochastic-approximation gradient methods are attractive for large-scale convex optimization because they offer inexpensive iterations. They are especially popular in data-fitting and machine-learning applications where the data arrives in…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-01-09 Michael P. Friedlander , Gabriel Goh

In this paper, we provide novel optimal (or near optimal) convergence rates for a clipped version of the stochastic subgradient method. We consider nonsmooth convex problems over possibly unbounded domains, under heavy-tailed noise that…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-21 Daniela Angela Parletta , Andrea Paudice , Saverio Salzo

We study stochastic nonconvex optimization under heavy-tailed noise. In this setting, the stochastic gradients only have bounded $p$-th central moment ($p$-BCM) for some $p \in (1,2]$. Building on the foundational work of Arjevani et al.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-01 Adrien Fradin , Abdurakhmon Sadiev , Laurent Condat , Peter Richtárik

The empirical evidence indicates that stochastic optimization with heavy-tailed gradient noise is more appropriate to characterize the training of machine learning models than that with standard bounded gradient variance noise. Most…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-28 Hongxu Chen , Ke Wei , Xiaoming Yuan , Luo Luo

We consider stochastic convex optimization for heavy-tailed data with the guarantee of being differentially private (DP). Most prior works on differentially private stochastic convex optimization for heavy-tailed data are either restricted…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-11 Chenhan Jin , Kaiwen Zhou , Bo Han , James Cheng , Tieyong Zeng

This paper studies the convergence of clipped stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithms with decision-dependent data distribution. Our setting is motivated by privacy preserving optimization algorithms that interact with performative…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-31 Qiang Li , Michal Yemini , Hoi-To Wai

Differentially Private Stochastic Gradient Descent (DPSGD) is widely utilized to preserve training data privacy in deep learning, which first clips the gradients to a predefined norm and then injects calibrated noise into the training…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-29 Haichao Sha , Yang Cao , Yong Liu , Yuncheng Wu , Ruixuan Liu , Hong Chen

Existing decentralized stochastic optimization methods assume the lower-level loss function is strongly convex and the stochastic gradient noise has finite variance. These strong assumptions typically are not satisfied in real-world machine…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-26 Xinwen Zhang , Yihan Zhang , Heng Liang , Hongchang Gao

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-27 Naoki Sato , Hideaki Iiduka