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We propose an algorithm for solving nonlinear convex programs defined in terms of a symmetric positive semidefinite matrix variable $X$. This algorithm rests on the factorization $X=Y Y^T$, where the number of columns of Y fixes the rank of…
Matrix completion is a basic machine learning problem that has wide applications, especially in collaborative filtering and recommender systems. Simple non-convex optimization algorithms are popular and effective in practice. Despite recent…
Nonnegative matrix factorization arises widely in machine learning and data analysis. In this paper, for a given factorization of rank r, we consider the sparse stochastic matrix factorization (SSMF) of decomposing a prescribed m-by-n…
Robust principal component analysis seeks to recover a low-rank matrix from fully observed data with sparse corruptions. A scalable approach fits a low-rank factorization by minimizing the sum of entrywise absolute residuals, leading to a…
Factored stochastic constraint programming (FSCP) is a formalism to represent multi-stage decision making problems under uncertainty. FSCP models support factorized probabilistic models and involve constraints over decision and random…
In this paper, we study the general problem of optimizing a convex function $F(L)$ over the set of $p \times p$ matrices, subject to rank constraints on $L$. However, existing first-order methods for solving such problems either are too…
Sparse matrix factorization is the problem of approximating a matrix $\mathbf{Z}$ by a product of $J$ sparse factors $\mathbf{X}^{(J)} \mathbf{X}^{(J-1)} \ldots \mathbf{X}^{(1)}$. This paper focuses on identifiability issues that appear in…
The scenario approach is a general data-driven algorithm to chance-constrained optimization. It seeks the optimal solution that is feasible to a carefully chosen number of scenarios. A crucial step in the scenario approach is to compute the…
Quadratic systems with lossless quadratic terms arise in many applications, including models of atmosphere and incompressible fluid flows. Such systems have a trapping region if all trajectories eventually converge to and stay within a…
The orthogonal group synchronization problem, which aims to recover a set of $d \times d$ orthogonal matrices from their pairwise noisy products, plays a fundamental role in signal processing, computer vision, and network analysis. In…
Chance constraints are frequently used to limit the probability of constraint violations in real-world optimization problems where the constraints involve stochastic components. We study chance-constrained submodular optimization problems,…
We analyze a distributed algorithm to compute a low-rank matrix factorization on $N$ clients, each holding a local dataset $\mathbf{S}^i \in \mathbb{R}^{n_i \times d}$, mathematically, we seek to solve $min_{\mathbf{U}^i \in…
A multi-convex optimization problem is one in which the variables can be partitioned into sets over which the problem is convex when the other variables are fixed. Multi-convex problems are generally solved approximately using variations on…
We present and analyze a central cutting surface algorithm for general semi-infinite convex optimization problems, and use it to develop a novel algorithm for distributionally robust optimization problems in which the uncertainty set…
Optimization over low rank matrices has broad applications in machine learning. For large scale problems, an attractive heuristic is to factorize the low rank matrix to a product of two much smaller matrices. In this paper, we study the…
Substantial progress has been made recently on developing provably accurate and efficient algorithms for low-rank matrix factorization via nonconvex optimization. While conventional wisdom often takes a dim view of nonconvex optimization…
Factor Analysis (FA) is a technique of fundamental importance that is widely used in classical and modern multivariate statistics, psychometrics and econometrics. In this paper, we revisit the classical rank-constrained FA problem, which…
The scenario-based optimization approach (`scenario approach') provides an intuitive way of approximating the solution to chance-constrained optimization programs, based on finding the optimal solution under a finite number of sampled…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) on a low-rank factorization is commonly employed to speed up matrix problems including matrix completion, subspace tracking, and SDP relaxation. In this paper, we exhibit a step size scheme for SGD on a…
Factor analysis models explain dependence among observed variables by a smaller number of unobserved factors. A main challenge in confirmatory factor analysis is determining whether the factor loading matrix is identifiable from the…