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Structured non-convex learning problems, for which critical points have favorable statistical properties, arise frequently in statistical machine learning. Algorithmic convergence and statistical estimation rates are well-understood for…
We investigate the stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method where the step size lies within a banded region instead of being given by a fixed formula. The optimal convergence rate under mild conditions and large initial step size is proved.…
In reinforcement learning (RL), offline learning decoupled learning from data collection and is useful in dealing with exploration-exploitation tradeoff and enables data reuse in many applications. In this work, we study two offline…
We consider stochastic optimization problems where the objective depends on some parameter, as commonly found in hyperparameter optimization for instance. We investigate the behavior of the derivatives of the iterates of Stochastic Gradient…
Stochastic optimization via Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is a fundamental problem in statistics and optimization. This paper revisits Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) for strongly convex objectives, establishing tight, uniform-in-time…
Matrix completion, where we wish to recover a low rank matrix by observing a few entries from it, is a widely studied problem in both theory and practice with wide applications. Most of the provable algorithms so far on this problem have…
This paper introduces two variational inference approaches for infinite-dimensional inverse problems, developed through gradient descent with a constant learning rate. The proposed methods enable efficient approximate sampling from the…
We consider speeding up stochastic gradient descent (SGD) by parallelizing it across multiple workers. We assume the same data set is shared among $N$ workers, who can take SGD steps and coordinate with a central server. While it is…
In large-scale time series forecasting, one often encounters the situation where the temporal patterns of time series, while drifting over time, differ from one another in the same dataset. In this paper, we provably show under such…
Stein discrepancies (SDs) monitor convergence and non-convergence in approximate inference when exact integration and sampling are intractable. However, the computation of a Stein discrepancy can be prohibitive if the Stein operator - often…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is widely used in machine learning research. Previous convergence analyses of SGD under the vanishing step-size setting typically require Robbins-Monro conditions. However, in practice, a wider variety of…
The convergence behavior of Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) crucially depends on the stepsize configuration. When using a constant stepsize, the SGD iterates form a Markov chain, enjoying fast convergence during the initial transient…
The stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method is a widely used approach for solving stochastic optimization problems, but its convergence is typically slow. Existing variance reduction techniques, such as SAGA, improve convergence by…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) has emerged as the quintessential method in a data scientist's toolbox. Using SGD for high-stakes applications requires, however, careful quantification of the associated uncertainty. Towards that end, in…
We propose a stochastic optimization method for minimizing loss functions, expressed as an expected value, that adaptively controls the batch size used in the computation of gradient approximations and the step size used to move along such…
We study the Markov semigroups for two important algorithms from machine learning: stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and online principal component analysis (PCA). We investigate the effects of small jumps on the properties of the…
The performance of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) depends critically on how learning rates are tuned and decreased over time. We propose a method to automatically adjust multiple learning rates so as to minimize the expected error at any…
In this paper, we examine the time it takes for stochastic gradient descent (SGD) to reach the global minimum of a general, non-convex loss function. We approach this question through the lens of randomly perturbed dynamical systems and…
Online decision making aims to learn the optimal decision rule by making personalized decisions and updating the decision rule recursively. It has become easier than before with the help of big data, but new challenges also come along.…
Machine learning models trained with \emph{stochastic} gradient descent (SGD) can generalize better than those trained with deterministic gradient descent (GD). In this work, we study SGD's impact on generalization through the lens of the…