Related papers: Boosting Gradient Ascent for Continuous DR-submodu…

We consider nonconvex-concave minimax optimization problems of the form $\min_{\bf x}\max_{\bf y\in{\mathcal Y}} f({\bf x},{\bf y})$, where $f$ is strongly-concave in $\bf y$ but possibly nonconvex in $\bf x$ and ${\mathcal Y}$ is a convex…

This paper conducts a comparative study of proximal gradient methods (PGMs) and proximal DC algorithms (PDCAs) for sparse regression problems which can be cast as Difference-of-two-Convex-functions (DC) optimization problems. It has been…

In this paper, we study the problem of monotone (weakly) DR-submodular continuous maximization. While previous methods require the gradient information of the objective function, we propose a derivative-free algorithm LDGM for the first…

We propose Booster, a novel accelerator for gradient boosting trees based on the unique characteristics of gradient boosting models. We observe that the dominant steps of gradient boosting training (accounting for 90-98% of training time)…

Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) is a widely used reinforcement learning algorithm that heavily relies on accurate advantage estimates for stable and efficient training. However, raw advantage signals can exhibit significant variance,…

We propose new algorithms with provable performance for online binary optimization subject to general constraints and in dynamic settings. We consider the subset of problems in which the objective function is submodular. We propose the…

Submodular functions have applications throughout machine learning, but in many settings, we do not have direct access to the underlying function $f$. We focus on stochastic functions that are given as an expectation of functions over a…

We study boosting algorithms from a new perspective. We show that the Lagrange dual problems of AdaBoost, LogitBoost and soft-margin LPBoost with generalized hinge loss are all entropy maximization problems. By looking at the dual problems…

In this paper, we propose a proximal stochasitc gradient algorithm (PSGA) for solving composite optimization problems by incorporating variance reduction techniques and an adaptive step-size strategy. In the PSGA method, the objective…

The difference-of-convex algorithm (DCA) is a well-established nonlinear programming technique that solves successive convex optimization problems. These sub-problems are obtained from the difference-of-convex~(DC) decompositions of the…

The fields of machine learning and mathematical optimization increasingly intertwined. The special topic on supervised learning and convex optimization examines this interplay. The training part of most supervised learning algorithms can…

Using gradient descent (GD) with fixed or decaying step-size is a standard practice in unconstrained optimization problems. However, when the loss function is only locally convex, such a step-size schedule artificially slows GD down as it…

The problem of direction of arrival (DOA) estimation has been studied for decades as an essential technology in enabling radar, wireless communications, and array signal processing related applications. In this paper, the DOA estimation…

Gradient boosting algorithms construct a regression predictor using a linear combination of ``base learners''. Boosting also offers an approach to obtaining robust non-parametric regression estimators that are scalable to applications with…

Gradient boosting from the field of statistical learning is widely known as a powerful framework for estimation and selection of predictor effects in various regression models by adapting concepts from classification theory. Current…

This paper discusses theoretical and experimental aspects of gradient-based approaches to the direct optimization of policy performance in controlled POMDPs. We introduce GPOMDP, a REINFORCE-like algorithm for estimating an approximation to…

The multi-gradient descent algorithm (MGDA) finds a common descent direction that can improve all objectives by identifying the minimum-norm point in the convex hull of the objective gradients. This method has become a foundational tool in…

We introduce the \emph{submodular objectives chasing problem}, which generalizes many natural and previously-studied problems: a sequence of constrained submodular maximization problems is revealed over time, with both the objective and…

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) methods see many uses in optimization problems. Modifications to the algorithm, such as momentum-based SGD methods have been known to produce better results in certain cases. Much of this, however, is due…

Gradient boosting of prediction rules is an efficient approach to learn potentially interpretable yet accurate probabilistic models. However, actual interpretability requires to limit the number and size of the generated rules, and existing…