Related papers: High Probability Analysis for Non-Convex Stochasti…
In this paper, the problem of distributed optimization is studied via a network of agents. Each agent only has access to a stochastic gradient of its own objective function in the previous time, and can communicate with its neighbors via a…
We study stochastic optimization of nonconvex loss functions, which are typical objectives for training neural networks. We propose stochastic approximation algorithms which optimize a series of regularized, nonlinearized losses on large…
An algorithm is said to be adaptive to a certain parameter (of the problem) if it does not need a priori knowledge of such a parameter but performs competitively to those that know it. This dissertation presents our work on adaptive…
Our work focuses on stochastic gradient methods for optimizing a smooth non-convex loss function with a non-smooth non-convex regularizer. Research on this class of problem is quite limited, and until recently no non-asymptotic convergence…
Training a classifier under non-convex constraints has gotten increasing attention in the machine learning community thanks to its wide range of applications such as algorithmic fairness and class-imbalanced classification. However, several…
In this paper, we study stochastic non-convex optimization with non-convex random functions. Recent studies on non-convex optimization revolve around establishing second-order convergence, i.e., converging to a nearly second-order optimal…
Stochastic smooth nonconvex minimax problems are prevalent in machine learning, e.g., GAN training, fair classification, and distributionally robust learning. Stochastic gradient descent ascent (GDA)-type methods are popular in practice due…
We prove novel convergence results for a stochastic proximal gradient algorithm suitable for solving a large class of convex optimization problems, where a convex objective function is given by the sum of a smooth and a possibly non-smooth…
Privacy-preserving training on sensitive data commonly relies on differentially private stochastic optimization with gradient clipping and Gaussian noise. The clipping threshold is a critical control knob: if set too small, systematic…
Gradient clipping is an important technique for deep neural networks with exploding gradients, such as recurrent neural networks. Recent studies have shown that the loss functions of these networks do not satisfy the conventional smoothness…
Gradient boosting is a state-of-the-art prediction technique that sequentially produces a model in the form of linear combinations of simple predictors---typically decision trees---by solving an infinite-dimensional convex optimization…
This paper considers stochastic optimization problems for a large class of objective functions, including convex and continuous submodular. Stochastic proximal gradient methods have been widely used to solve such problems; however, their…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) and its variants are the most used algorithms in machine learning applications. In particular, SGD with adaptive learning rates and momentum is the industry standard to train deep networks. Despite the…
Gradient normalization and soft clipping are two popular techniques for tackling instability issues and improving convergence of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with momentum. In this article, we study these types of methods through the…
While stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is still the \emph{de facto} algorithm in deep learning, adaptive methods like Clipped SGD/Adam have been observed to outperform SGD across important tasks, such as attention models. The settings…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and its variants enable modern artificial intelligence. However, theoretical understanding lags far behind their empirical success. It is widely believed that SGD has a curious ability to avoid sharp local…
We analyze convergence rates of stochastic optimization procedures for non-smooth convex optimization problems. By combining randomized smoothing techniques with accelerated gradient methods, we obtain convergence rates of stochastic…
We study stochastic convex optimization with heavy-tailed data under the constraint of differential privacy (DP). Most prior work on this problem is restricted to the case where the loss function is Lipschitz. Instead, as introduced by…
Stochastic gradient descent is one of the most common iterative algorithms used in machine learning and its convergence analysis is a rich area of research. Understanding its convergence properties can help inform what modifications of it…
Methods with adaptive stepsizes, such as AdaGrad and Adam, are essential for training modern Deep Learning models, especially Large Language Models. Typically, the noise in the stochastic gradients is heavy-tailed for the later ones.…