Related papers: An optimal lower bound for smooth convex functions

Machine learning algorithms typically perform optimization over a class of non-convex functions. In this work, we provide bounds on the fundamental hardness of identifying the global minimizer of a non convex function. Specifically, we…

We study the foundations of variational inference, which frames posterior inference as an optimisation problem, for probabilistic programming. The dominant approach for optimisation in practice is stochastic gradient descent. In particular,…

In a recent paper, Bubeck, Lee, and Singh introduced a new first order method for minimizing smooth strongly convex functions. Their geometric descent algorithm, largely inspired by the ellipsoid method, enjoys the optimal linear rate of…

Many practical optimization problems lack strong convexity. Fortunately, recent studies have revealed that first-order algorithms also enjoy linear convergences under various weaker regularity conditions. While the relationship among…

We consider convex optimization problems with the objective function having Lipshitz-continuous $p$-th order derivative, where $p\geq 1$. We propose a new tensor method, which closes the gap between the lower…

The Optimized Gradient Method (OGM), its strongly convex extension, the Information Theoretical Exact Method (ITEM), as well as the related Triple Momentum Method (TMM) have superior convergence guarantees when compared to the Fast Gradient…

We study the classical optimization problem $\min_{x \in \mathbb{R}^d} f(x)$ and analyze the gradient descent (GD) method in both nonconvex and convex settings. It is well-known that, under the $L$-smoothness assumption ($\|\nabla^2 f(x)\|…

We consider the problem of optimising the expected value of a loss functional over a nonlinear model class of functions, assuming that we have only access to realisations of the gradient of the loss. This is a classical task in statistics,…

In this paper, a new theory is developed for first-order stochastic convex optimization, showing that the global convergence rate is sufficiently quantified by a local growth rate of the objective function in a neighborhood of the optimal…

In this paper, we propose an online convex optimization approach with two different levels of adaptivity. On a higher level, our approach is agnostic to the unknown types and curvatures of the online functions, while at a lower level, it…

We develop multi-step gradient methods for network-constrained optimization of strongly convex functions with Lipschitz-continuous gradients. Given the topology of the underlying network and bounds on the Hessian of the objective function,…

We derive several numerical methods for designing optimized first-order algorithms in unconstrained convex optimization settings. Our methods are based on the Performance Estimation Problem (PEP) framework, which casts the worst-case…

The gradient descent (GD) method -- is a fundamental and likely the most popular optimization algorithm in machine learning (ML), with a history traced back to a paper in 1847 (Cauchy, 1847). It was studied under various assumptions,…

We study the trade-offs between convergence rate and robustness to gradient errors in designing a first-order algorithm. We focus on gradient descent (GD) and accelerated gradient (AG) methods for minimizing strongly convex functions when…

Under mild assumptions stochastic gradient methods asymptotically achieve an optimal rate of convergence if the arithmetic mean of all iterates is returned as an approximate optimal solution. However, in the absence of stochastic noise, the…

We present an optimization algorithm that can identify a global minimum of a potentially nonconvex smooth function with high probability, assuming the Gibbs measure of the potential satisfies a logarithmic Sobolev inequality. Our…

We show that the exact worst-case performance of fixed-step first-order methods for unconstrained optimization of smooth (possibly strongly) convex functions can be obtained by solving convex programs. Finding the worst-case performance of…

In this paper we consider a class of optimization problems with a strongly convex objective function and the feasible set given by an intersection of a simple convex set with a set given by a number of linear equality and inequality…

This paper considers a generic convex minimization template with affine constraints over a compact domain, which covers key semidefinite programming applications. The existing conditional gradient methods either do not apply to our template…

We consider the problem of optimizing the sum of a smooth convex function and a non-smooth convex function using proximal-gradient methods, where an error is present in the calculation of the gradient of the smooth term or in the proximity…