Related papers: Universal Gradient Methods for Stochastic Convex O…
This work considers stochastic optimization problems in which the objective function values can only be computed by a blackbox corrupted by some random noise following an unknown distribution. The proposed method is based on sequential…
In machine learning, nonconvex optimization problems with multiple local optimums are often encountered. Graduated Optimization Algorithm (GOA) is a popular heuristic method to obtain global optimums of nonconvex problems through…
Zeroth-order optimization (ZOO) is an important framework for stochastic optimization when gradients are unavailable or expensive to compute. A potential limitation of existing ZOO methods is the bias inherent in most gradient estimators…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is a widely deployed optimization procedure throughout data-driven and simulation-driven disciplines, which has drawn a substantial interest in understanding its global behavior across a broad class of…
This paper studies distributed nonconvex optimization problems with stochastic gradients for a multi-agent system, in which each agent aims to minimize the sum of all agents' cost functions by using local compressed information exchange. We…
This paper is devoted to the study of stochastic optimization problems under the generalized smoothness assumption. By considering the unbiased gradient oracle in Stochastic Gradient Descent, we provide strategies to achieve in bounds the…
We study adaptive methods for differentially private convex optimization, proposing and analyzing differentially private variants of a Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) algorithm with adaptive stepsizes, as well as the AdaGrad algorithm. We…
We systematically develop a learning-based treatment of stochastic optimal control (SOC), relying on direct optimization of parametric control policies. We propose a derivation of adjoint sensitivity results for stochastic differential…
We analyze stochastic gradient algorithms for optimizing nonconvex, nonsmooth finite-sum problems. In particular, the objective function is given by the summation of a differentiable (possibly nonconvex) component, together with a possibly…
It is well known that the optimal convergence rate for stochastic optimization of smooth functions is $O(1/\sqrt{T})$, which is same as stochastic optimization of Lipschitz continuous convex functions. This is in contrast to optimizing…
Dual averaging and gradient descent with their stochastic variants stand as the two canonical recipe books for first-order optimization: Every modern variant can be viewed as a descendant of one or the other. In the convex regime, these…
The graduated optimization approach, also known as the continuation method, is a popular heuristic to solving non-convex problems that has received renewed interest over the last decade. Despite its popularity, very little is known in terms…
Classical stochastic gradient methods for optimization rely on noisy gradient approximations that become progressively less accurate as iterates approach a solution. The large noise and small signal in the resulting gradients makes it…
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…
Adaptive gradient methods, such as AdaGrad, are among the most successful optimization algorithms for neural network training. While these methods are known to achieve better dimensional dependence than stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for…
In this paper, we develop new first-order method for composite non-convex minimization problems with simple constraints and inexact oracle. The objective function is given as a sum of "`hard"', possibly non-convex part, and "`simple"'…
In this paper, we study zeroth-order algorithms for minimax optimization problems that are nonconvex in one variable and strongly-concave in the other variable. Such minimax optimization problems have attracted significant attention lately…
The stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method is a widely used approach for solving stochastic optimization problems, but its convergence is typically slow. Existing variance reduction techniques, such as SAGA, improve convergence by…
We develop an algorithm for parameter-free stochastic convex optimization (SCO) whose rate of convergence is only a double-logarithmic factor larger than the optimal rate for the corresponding known-parameter setting. In contrast, the best…
In this paper, we provide a novel analytical perspective on the theoretical understanding of gradient-based learning algorithms by interpreting consensus-based optimization (CBO), a recently proposed multi-particle derivative-free…