Related papers: A Homogenization Approach for Gradient-Dominated S…
We propose two novel conditional gradient-based methods for solving structured stochastic convex optimization problems with a large number of linear constraints. Instances of this template naturally arise from SDP-relaxations of…
Training neural networks requires optimizing a loss function that may be highly irregular, and in particular neither convex nor smooth. Popular training algorithms are based on stochastic gradient descent with momentum (SGDM), for which…
We propose a new gradient descent algorithm with added stochastic terms for finding the global optimizers of nonconvex optimization problems. A key component in the algorithm is the adaptive tuning of the randomness based on the value of…
The success of adversarial formulations in machine learning has brought renewed motivation for smooth games. In this work, we focus on the class of stochastic Hamiltonian methods and provide the first convergence guarantees for certain…
Stochastic gradient methods have been a popular and powerful choice of optimization methods, aimed at minimizing functions. Their advantage lies in the fact that that one approximates the gradient as opposed to using the full Jacobian…
Conditional stochastic optimization covers a variety of applications ranging from invariant learning and causal inference to meta-learning. However, constructing unbiased gradient estimators for such problems is challenging due to the…
We propose a new stochastic gradient method for optimizing the sum of a finite set of smooth functions, where the sum is strongly convex. While standard stochastic gradient methods converge at sublinear rates for this problem, the proposed…
We consider stochastic convex optimization problems where the objective is an expectation over smooth functions. For this setting we suggest a novel gradient estimate that combines two recent mechanism that are related to notion of…
Large-scale nonconvex optimization problems are ubiquitous in modern machine learning, and among practitioners interested in solving them, Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) reigns supreme. We revisit the analysis of SGD in the nonconvex…
Decentralized solutions to finite-sum minimization are of significant importance in many signal processing, control, and machine learning applications. In such settings, the data is distributed over a network of arbitrarily-connected nodes…
In this work, we consider constrained stochastic optimization problems under hidden convexity, i.e., those that admit a convex reformulation via non-linear (but invertible) map $c(\cdot)$. A number of non-convex problems ranging from…
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 analyze stochastic gradient descent for optimizing non-convex functions. In many cases for non-convex functions the goal is to find a reasonable local minimum, and the main concern is that gradient updates are trapped in saddle points.…
We develop a new algorithm for non-convex stochastic optimization that finds an $\epsilon$-critical point in the optimal $O(\epsilon^{-3})$ stochastic gradient and Hessian-vector product computations. Our algorithm uses Hessian-vector…
Many relevant problems in the area of systems and control, such as controller synthesis, observer design and model reduction, can be viewed as optimization problems involving dynamical systems: for instance, maximizing performance in the…
Stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics (SGLD) has gained the attention of optimization researchers due to its global optimization properties. This paper proves an improved convergence property to local minimizers of nonconvex objective…
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…
Various gradient compression schemes have been proposed to mitigate the communication cost in distributed training of large scale machine learning models. Sign-based methods, such as signSGD, have recently been gaining popularity because of…
A number of optimization approaches have been proposed for optimizing nonconvex objectives (e.g. deep learning models), such as batch gradient descent, stochastic gradient descent and stochastic variance reduced gradient descent. Theory…
First-order methods for stochastic optimization have undeniable relevance, in part due to their pivotal role in machine learning. Variance reduction for these algorithms has become an important research topic. In contrast to common…