Related papers: Complexity results and active-set identification o…

We describe a line-search algorithm which achieves the best-known worst-case complexity results for problems with a certain "strict saddle" property that has been observed to hold in low-rank matrix optimization problems. Our algorithm is…

In this paper we consider the minimization of a continuous function that is potentially not differentiable or not twice differentiable on the boundary of the feasible region. By exploiting an interior point technique, we present first- and…

In this paper, we develop a novel variant of off-policy natural actor-critic algorithm with linear function approximation and we establish a sample complexity of $\mathcal{O}(\epsilon^{-3})$, outperforming all the previously known…

Popular machine learning estimators involve regularization parameters that can be challenging to tune, and standard strategies rely on grid search for this task. In this paper, we revisit the techniques of approximating the regularization…

Simplex-type methods, such as the well-known Nelder-Mead algorithm, are widely used in derivative-free optimization (DFO), particularly in practice. Despite their popularity, the theoretical understanding of their convergence properties has…

Consider a generalization of the classical binary search problem in linearly sorted data to the graph-theoretic setting. The goal is to design an adaptive query algorithm, called a strategy, that identifies an initially unknown target…

In this work, we consider the problem of identifying an unknown linear dynamical system given a finite hypothesis class. In particular, we analyze the effect of the excitation input on the sample complexity of identifying the true system…

We consider the problem of minimizing a sum of non-convex functions over a compact domain, subject to linear inequality and equality constraints. Approximate solutions can be found by solving a convexified version of the problem, in which…

We provide sharp worst-case evaluation complexity bounds for nonconvex minimization problems with general inexpensive constraints, i.e.\ problems where the cost of evaluating/enforcing of the (possibly nonconvex or even disconnected)…

We consider an unconstrained problem of minimizing a smooth convex function which is only available through noisy observations of its values, the noise consisting of two parts. Similar to stochastic optimization problems, the first part is…

Dual first-order methods are essential techniques for large-scale constrained convex optimization. However, when recovering the primal solutions, we need $T(\epsilon^{-2})$ iterations to achieve an $\epsilon$-optimal primal solution when we…

We consider the problems ZERO EXTENSION and METRIC LABELLING under the paradigm of parameterized complexity. These are natural, well-studied problems with important applications, but have previously not received much attention from…

This paper describes a method for solving smooth nonconvex minimization problems subject to bound constraints with good worst-case complexity guarantees and practical performance. The method contains elements of two existing methods: the…

In an attempt to speed up the solution of the unit commitment (UC) problem, both machine-learning and optimization-based methods have been proposed to lighten the full UC formulation by removing as many superfluous line-flow constraints as…

There has been much recent interest in finding unconstrained local minima of smooth functions, due in part of the prevalence of such problems in machine learning and robust statistics. A particular focus is algorithms with good complexity…

Causal discovery is to learn cause-effect relationships among variables given observational data and is important for many applications. Existing causal discovery methods assume data sufficiency, which may not be the case in many real world…

In this work, we develop new insights into the fundamental problem of convexity testing of real-valued functions over the domain $[n]$. Specifically, we present a nonadaptive algorithm that, given inputs $\eps \in (0,1), s \in \mathbb{N}$,…

We find a searching method on ordered lists that surprisingly outperforms binary searching with respect to average query complexity while retaining minmax optimality. The method is shown to require $O(\log_2\log_2 n)$ queries on average…

Recent advances in randomized incremental methods for minimizing $L$-smooth $\mu$-strongly convex finite sums have culminated in tight complexity of $\tilde{O}((n+\sqrt{n L/\mu})\log(1/\epsilon))$ and $O(n+\sqrt{nL/\epsilon})$, where…

In this paper, we establish last-iterate convergence rates for off-policy actor--critic methods in reinforcement learning. In particular, under a single-loop, single-timescale implementation and a broad class of policy updates, including…