Related papers: Acceleration by Stepsize Hedging I: Multi-Step Des…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) gives an optimal convergence rate when minimizing convex stochastic objectives $f(x)$. However, in terms of making the gradients small, the original SGD does not give an optimal rate, even when $f(x)$ is…
We present a strikingly simple proof that two rules are sufficient to automate gradient descent: 1) don't increase the stepsize too fast and 2) don't overstep the local curvature. No need for functional values, no line search, no…
This paper is concerned with convergence of stochastic gradient algorithms with momentum terms in the nonconvex setting. A class of stochastic momentum methods, including stochastic gradient descent, heavy ball, and Nesterov's accelerated…
We propose an accelerated forward-backward method with fast convergence rate for finding a minimizer of a decomposable nonsmooth convex function over a closed convex set, and name it smoothing accelerated proximal gradient (SAPG) algorithm.…
Many popular learning-rate schedules for deep neural networks combine a decaying trend with local perturbations that attempt to escape saddle points and bad local minima. We derive convergence guarantees for bandwidth-based step-sizes, a…
Nesterov's accelerated gradient (AG) is a popular technique to optimize objective functions comprising two components: a convex loss and a penalty function. While AG methods perform well for convex penalties, such as the LASSO, convergence…
We introduce a generic scheme to solve nonconvex optimization problems using gradient-based algorithms originally designed for minimizing convex functions. Even though these methods may originally require convexity to operate, the proposed…
In this work, we study the computational complexity of reducing the squared gradient magnitude for smooth minimax optimization problems. First, we present algorithms with accelerated $\mathcal{O}(1/k^2)$ last-iterate rates, faster than the…
Selecting an effective step-size is a fundamental challenge in first-order optimization, especially for problems with non-Euclidean geometries. This paper presents a novel adaptive step-size strategy for optimization algorithms that rely on…
There is extensive literature on accelerating first-order optimization methods in a Euclidean setting. Under which conditions such acceleration is feasible in Riemannian optimization problems is an active area of research. Motivated by the…
Primal-dual algorithms for the resolution of convex-concave saddle point problems usually come with one or several step size parameters. Within the range where convergence is guaranteed, choosing well the step size can make the difference…
We show that accelerated gradient descent, averaged gradient descent and the heavy-ball method for non-strongly-convex problems may be reformulated as constant parameter second-order difference equation algorithms, where stability of the…
We introduce a general method for improving the convergence rate of gradient-based optimizers that is easy to implement and works well in practice. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the method in a range of optimization problems by…
Gradient-based iterative optimization methods are the workhorse of modern machine learning. They crucially rely on careful tuning of parameters like learning rate and momentum. However, one typically sets them using heuristic approaches…
We propose an efficient distributed randomized coordinate descent method for minimizing regularized non-strongly convex loss functions. The method attains the optimal $O(1/k^2)$ convergence rate, where $k$ is the iteration counter. The core…
We introduce a new adaptive step-size strategy for convex optimization with stochastic gradient that exploits the local geometry of the objective function only by means of a first-order stochastic oracle and without any hyper-parameter…
In this paper, we propose a new way to obtain optimal convergence rates for smooth stochastic (strong) convex optimization tasks. Our approach is based on results for optimization tasks where gradients have nonrandom noise. In contrast to…
A generalized conditional gradient method for minimizing the sum of two convex functions, one of them differentiable, is presented. This iterative method relies on two main ingredients: First, the minimization of a partially linearized…
We consider gradient descent with `momentum', a widely used method for loss function minimization in machine learning. This method is often used with `Nesterov acceleration', meaning that the gradient is evaluated not at the current…
We consider gradient descent with constant stepsizes and derive exact worst-case convergence rates on the minimum gradient norm of the iterates. Our analysis covers all possible stepsizes and arbitrary upper/lower bounds on the curvature of…