Related papers: The Black-Box Optimization Problem: Zero-Order Acc…

Universal methods for optimization are designed to achieve theoretically optimal convergence rates without any prior knowledge of the problem's regularity parameters or the accurarcy of the gradient oracle employed by the optimizer. In this…

Zeroth-order optimization is the process of minimizing an objective $f(x)$, given oracle access to evaluations at adaptively chosen inputs $x$. In this paper, we present two simple yet powerful GradientLess Descent (GLD) algorithms that do…

In this paper, we study nonconvex constrained stochastic zeroth-order optimization problems, for which we have access to exact information of constraints and noisy function values of the objective. We propose a Bregman linearized augmented…

Zeroth-order optimization (ZO) algorithms have been recently used to solve black-box or simulation-based learning and control problems, where the gradient of the objective function cannot be easily computed but can be approximated using the…

In this paper, we prove new complexity bounds for zeroth-order methods in non-convex optimization with inexact observations of the objective function values. We use the Gaussian smoothing approach of Nesterov and Spokoiny [2015] and extend…

We consider the zeroth-order optimization problem in the huge-scale setting, where the dimension of the problem is so large that performing even basic vector operations on the decision variables is infeasible. In this paper, we propose a…

Stochastic Gradient (SG) is the defacto iterative technique to solve stochastic optimization (SO) problems with a smooth (non-convex) objective $f$ and a stochastic first-order oracle. SG's attractiveness is due in part to its simplicity of…

In this study, we consider an optimization problem with uncertainty dependent on decision variables, which has recently attracted attention due to its importance in machine learning and pricing applications. In this problem, the gradient of…

The adaptive momentum method (AdaMM), which uses past gradients to update descent directions and learning rates simultaneously, has become one of the most popular first-order optimization methods for solving machine learning problems.…

The conditional gradient idea proposed by Marguerite Frank and Philip Wolfe in 1956 was so well received by the community that new algorithms (also called Frank--Wolfe type algorithms) are still being actively created. In this paper, we…

We provide a novel accelerated first-order method that achieves the asymptotically optimal convergence rate for smooth functions in the first-order oracle model. To this day, Nesterov's Accelerated Gradient Descent (AGD) and variations…

In this paper we consider stochastic weakly convex composite problems, however without the existence of a stochastic subgradient oracle. We present a derivative free algorithm that uses a two point approximation for computing a gradient…

In this work we address the problem of convex optimization in a multi-agent setting where the objective is to minimize the mean of local cost functions whose derivatives are not available (e.g. black-box models). Moreover agents can only…

This paper addresses black-box smooth optimization problems, where the objective and constraint functions are not explicitly known but can be queried. The main goal of this work is to generate a sequence of feasible points converging…

We consider a zeroth-order distributed optimization problem, where the global objective function is a black-box function and, as such, its gradient information is inaccessible to the local agents. Instead, the local agents can only use the…

Black-box algorithms are designed to optimize functions without relying on their underlying analytical structure or gradient information, making them essential when gradients are inaccessible or difficult to compute. Traditional methods for…

In this paper, we propose and analyze zeroth-order stochastic approximation algorithms for nonconvex and convex optimization, with a focus on addressing constrained optimization, high-dimensional setting and saddle-point avoiding. To handle…

In this work we consider unconstrained optimization problems. The objective function is known through a zeroth order stochastic oracle that gives an estimate of the true objective function. To solve these problems, we propose a…

Under mild assumptions stochastic gradient methods asymptotically achieve an optimal rate of convergence if the arithmetic mean of all iterates is returned as an approximate optimal solution. However, in the absence of stochastic noise, the…

This work studies constrained stochastic optimization problems where the objective and constraint functions are convex and expressed as compositions of stochastic functions. The problem arises in the context of fair classification, fair…