Related papers: Acceleration by Stepsize Hedging I: Multi-Step Des…
We provide a concise, self-contained proof that the Silver Stepsize Schedule proposed in Part I directly applies to smooth (non-strongly) convex optimization. Specifically, we show that with these stepsizes, gradient descent computes an…
Surprisingly, recent work has shown that gradient descent can be accelerated without using momentum -- just by judiciously choosing stepsizes. An open question raised by several papers is whether this phenomenon of stepsize-based…
We show that for separable convex optimization, random stepsizes fully accelerate Gradient Descent. Specifically, using inverse stepsizes i.i.d. from the Arcsine distribution improves the iteration complexity from $O(k)$ to $O(k^{1/2})$,…
This work introduces a two-step stepsize schedule for stochastic gradient methods minimizing smooth strongly convex functions. We consider the setting where only stochastic gradient approximations, which are unbiased, of bounded variance,…
This work considers stepsize schedules for gradient descent on smooth convex objectives. We extend the existing literature and propose a unified technique for constructing stepsizes with analytic bounds for an arbitrary number of…
This work investigates stepsize-based acceleration of gradient descent with {\em anytime} convergence guarantees. For smooth (non-strongly) convex optimization, we propose a stepsize schedule that allows gradient descent to achieve…
The convergence of stochastic gradient descent is highly dependent on the step-size, especially on non-convex problems such as neural network training. Step decay step-size schedules (constant and then cut) are widely used in practice…
Recent works by Altschuler and Parrilo and the authors have shown that it is possible to accelerate the convergence of gradient descent on smooth convex functions, even without momentum, just by picking special stepsizes. In this paper, we…
Gradient descent is slow to converge for ill-conditioned problems and non-convex problems. An important technique for acceleration is step-size adaptation. The first part of this paper contains a detailed review of step-size adaptation…
Recently Grimmer [1] showed for smooth convex optimization by utilizing longer steps periodically, gradient descent's textbook $LD^2/2T$ convergence guarantees can be improved by constant factors, conjecturing an accelerated rate strictly…
Recent results show that vanilla gradient descent can be accelerated for smooth convex objectives, merely by changing the stepsize sequence. We show that this can lead to surprisingly large errors indefinitely, and therefore ask: Is there…
This paper considers stochastic subgradient mirror-descent method for solving constrained convex minimization problems. In particular, a stochastic subgradient mirror-descent method with weighted iterate-averaging is investigated and its…
The incremental gradient method is a prominent algorithm for minimizing a finite sum of smooth convex functions, used in many contexts including large-scale data processing applications and distributed optimization over networks. It is a…
This work considers gradient descent for L-smooth convex optimization with stepsizes larger than the classic regime where descent can be ensured. The stepsize schedules considered are similar to but differ slightly from the recent silver…
This work establishes new convergence guarantees for gradient descent in smooth convex optimization via a computer-assisted analysis technique. Our theory allows nonconstant stepsize policies with frequent long steps potentially violating…
We modify Nesterov's constant step gradient method for strongly convex functions with Lipschitz continuous gradient described in Nesterov's book. Nesterov shows that $f(x_k) - f^* \leq L \prod_{i=1}^k (1 - \alpha_k) \| x_0 - x^* \|_2^2$…
Modern machine learning focuses on highly expressive models that are able to fit or interpolate the data completely, resulting in zero training loss. For such models, we show that the stochastic gradients of common loss functions satisfy a…
We propose an adaptive accelerated gradient method for solving smooth convex optimization problems. The method incorporates a scheme to determine the step size adaptively, by means of a local estimation of the smoothness constant, which is…
In large-scale learning algorithms, the momentum term is usually included in the stochastic sub-gradient method to improve the learning speed because it can navigate ravines efficiently to reach a local minimum. However, step-size and…
Stochastic gradient descent is the method of choice for large scale optimization of machine learning objective functions. Yet, its performance is greatly variable and heavily depends on the choice of the stepsizes. This has motivated a…