Related papers: Riemannian stochastic optimization methods avoid s…
We propose stochastic optimization algorithms that can find local minima faster than existing algorithms for nonconvex optimization problems, by exploiting the third-order smoothness to escape non-degenerate saddle points more efficiently.…
The standard theory of stochastic approximation (SA) is extended to the case when the constraint set is a Riemannian manifold. Specifically, the standard ODE method for analyzing SA schemes is extended to iterations constrained to stay on a…
Poisson likelihood models have been prevalently used in imaging, social networks, and time series analysis. We propose fast, simple, theoretically-grounded, and versatile, optimization algorithms for Poisson likelihood modeling. The Poisson…
In this work, we consider the low rank decomposition (SDPR) of general convex semidefinite programming problems (SDP) that contain both a positive semidefinite matrix and a nonnegative vector as variables. We develop a rank-support-adaptive…
In this paper, we provide some analysis on the asymptotic escape of strict saddles in manifold optimization using the projected gradient descent (PGD) algorithm. One of our main contributions is that we extend the current analysis to…
Stochastic convex optimization is a basic and well studied primitive in machine learning. It is well known that convex and Lipschitz functions can be minimized efficiently using Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD). The Normalized Gradient…
This paper shows that a perturbed form of gradient descent converges to a second-order stationary point in a number iterations which depends only poly-logarithmically on dimension (i.e., it is almost "dimension-free"). The convergence rate…
It is known that gradient descent (GD) on a $C^2$ cost function generically avoids strict saddle points when using a small, constant step size. However, no such guarantee existed for GD with a line-search method. We provide one for a…
This paper considers a class of distributed resource allocation problems where each agent privately holds a smooth, potentially non-convex local objective, subject to a globally coupled equality constraint. Built upon the existing method,…
This paper focuses on minimizing a smooth function combined with a nonsmooth regularization term on a compact Riemannian submanifold embedded in the Euclidean space under a decentralized setting. Typically, there are two types of approaches…
Numerous problems in optics, quantum physics, stability analysis, and control of dynamical systems can be brought to an optimization problem with matrix variable subjected to the symplecticity constraint. As this constraint nicely forms a…
Convergence to a saddle point for convex-concave functions has been studied for decades, while recent years has seen a surge of interest in non-convex (zero-sum) smooth games, motivated by their recent wide applications. It remains an…
We analyze stochastic gradient algorithms for optimizing nonconvex problems. In particular, our goal is to find local minima (second-order stationary points) instead of just finding first-order stationary points which may be some bad…
Loss functions with a large number of saddle points are one of the major obstacles for training modern machine learning models efficiently. First-order methods such as gradient descent are usually the methods of choice for training machine…
We consider non-smooth saddle point optimization problems. To solve these problems, we propose a zeroth-order method under bounded or Lipschitz continuous noise, possible adversarial. In contrast to the state-of-the-art algorithms, our…
Momentum Stochastic Gradient Descent (MSGD) algorithm has been widely applied to many nonconvex optimization problems in machine learning, e.g., training deep neural networks, variational Bayesian inference, and etc. Despite its empirical…
This paper proposes a general framework of Riemannian adaptive optimization methods. The framework encapsulates several stochastic optimization algorithms on Riemannian manifolds and incorporates the mini-batch strategy that is often used…
The proliferation of saddle points, rather than poor local minima, is increasingly understood to be a primary obstacle in large-scale non-convex optimization for machine learning. Variable elimination algorithms, like Variable Projection…
We consider a family of algorithms that successively sample and minimize simple stochastic models of the objective function. We show that under reasonable conditions on approximation quality and regularity of the models, any such algorithm…
Rapid advances in data collection and processing capabilities have allowed for the use of increasingly complex models that give rise to nonconvex optimization problems. These formulations, however, can be arbitrarily difficult to solve in…