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We develop a novel framework to study smooth and strongly convex optimization algorithms, both deterministic and stochastic. Focusing on quadratic functions we are able to examine optimization algorithms as a recursive application of linear…
Gradient descent is an important class of iterative algorithms for minimizing convex functions. Classically, gradient descent has been a sequential and synchronous process. Distributed and asynchronous variants of gradient descent have been…
In this paper we consider finite sum composite convex optimization problems with many functional constraints. The objective function is expressed as a finite sum of two terms, one of which admits easy computation of (sub)gradients while the…
Beginning with the projectively invariant method for linear programming, interior point methods have led to powerful algorithms for many difficult computing problems, in combinatorial optimization, logic, number theory and non-convex…
Online minimization of an unknown convex function over the interval $[0,1]$ is considered under first-order stochastic bandit feedback, which returns a random realization of the gradient of the function at each query point. Without knowing…
This paper reviews the gradient sampling methodology for solving nonsmooth, nonconvex optimization problems. An intuitively straightforward gradient sampling algorithm is stated and its convergence properties are summarized. Throughout this…
This paper considers the decentralized convex optimization problem, which has a wide range of applications in large-scale machine learning, sensor networks, and control theory. We propose novel algorithms that achieve optimal computation…
Despite the recent growth of theoretical studies and empirical successes of neural networks, gradient backpropagation is still the most widely used algorithm for training such networks. On the one hand, we have deterministic or full…
We analyze stochastic algorithms for optimizing nonconvex, nonsmooth finite-sum problems, where the nonconvex part is smooth and the nonsmooth part is convex. Surprisingly, unlike the smooth case, our knowledge of this fundamental problem…
Submodular function minimization is a fundamental optimization problem that arises in several applications in machine learning and computer vision. The problem is known to be solvable in polynomial time, but general purpose algorithms have…
The problem of minimizing sum-of-nonconvex functions (i.e., convex functions that are average of non-convex ones) is becoming increasingly important in machine learning, and is the core machinery for PCA, SVD, regularized Newton's method,…
This paper presents the SCvx algorithm, a successive convexification algorithm designed to solve non-convex constrained optimal control problems with global convergence and superlinear convergence-rate guarantees. The proposed algorithm can…
We revisit logistic regression and its nonlinear extensions, including multilayer feedforward neural networks, by showing that these classifiers can be viewed as converting input or higher-level features into Dempster-Shafer mass functions…
We combine two advanced ideas widely used in optimization for machine learning: shuffling strategy and momentum technique to develop a novel shuffling gradient-based method with momentum, coined Shuffling Momentum Gradient (SMG), for…
This work introduces a hybrid non-Euclidean optimization method which generalizes gradient norm clipping by combining steepest descent and conditional gradient approaches. The method achieves the best of both worlds by establishing a…
This paper presents and investigates an inexact proximal gradient method for solving composite convex optimization problems characterized by an objective function composed of a sum of a full-domain differentiable convex function and a…
In this paper, we consider the convex, finite-sum minimization problem with explicit convex constraints over strongly connected directed graphs. The constraint is an intersection of several convex sets each being known to only one node. To…
Many problems in machine learning can be formulated as optimizing a convex functional over a vector space of measures. This paper studies the convergence of the mirror descent algorithm in this infinite-dimensional setting. Defining Bregman…
In this paper, we focus on the problem of minimizing the sum of a nonconvex differentiable function and a DC (Difference of Convex functions) function, where the differentiable function is not restricted to the global Lipschitz gradient…
We present a uniform analysis of biased stochastic gradient methods for minimizing convex, strongly convex, and non-convex composite objectives, and identify settings where bias is useful in stochastic gradient estimation. The framework we…