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We use a rank one Gaussian perturbation to derive a smooth stochastic approximation of the maximum eigenvalue function. We then combine this smoothing result with an optimal smooth stochastic optimization algorithm to produce an efficient…
Efficient optimization remains a fundamental challenge across numerous scientific and engineering domains, especially when objective function and gradient evaluations are computationally expensive. While zeroth-order optimization methods…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and its variants are widely used and highly effective optimization methods in machine learning, especially for neural network training. By using a single datum or a small subset of the data, selected…
Optimization of convex functions under stochastic zeroth-order feedback has been a major and challenging question in online learning. In this work, we consider the problem of optimizing second-order smooth and strongly convex functions…
In this paper, we introduce a new class of nonsmooth convex functions called SOS-convex semialgebraic functions extending the recently proposed notion of SOS-convex polynomials. This class of nonsmooth convex functions covers many common…
This paper deals with composite optimization problems having the objective function formed as the sum of two terms, one has Lipschitz continuous gradient along random subspaces and may be nonconvex and the second term is simple and…
In this paper we propose a distributed version of a randomized block-coordinate descent method for minimizing the sum of a partially separable smooth convex function and a fully separable non-smooth convex function. Under the assumption of…
Learning representation from relative similarity comparisons, often called ordinal embedding, gains rising attention in recent years. Most of the existing methods are batch methods designed mainly based on the convex optimization, say, the…
Local Bayesian optimization is a promising practical approach to solve the high dimensional black-box function optimization problem. Among them is the approximated gradient class of methods, which implements a strategy similar to gradient…
In this paper, we study the convergence properties of the Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) method for finding a stationary point of a given objective function $J(\cdot)$. The objective function is not required to be convex. Rather, our…
We consider the problem of minimizing a difference of (smooth) convex functions over a compact convex feasible region $P$, i.e., $\min_{x \in P} f(x) - g(x)$, with smooth $f$ and Lipschitz continuous $g$. This computational study builds…
It is well-known that the reparameterisation gradient estimator, which exhibits low variance in practice, is biased for non-differentiable models. This may compromise correctness of gradient-based optimisation methods such as stochastic…
The growing prevalence of nonsmooth optimization problems in machine learning has spurred significant interest in generalized smoothness assumptions. Among these, the (L0, L1)-smoothness assumption has emerged as one of the most prominent.…
This paper considers the nonconvex nonsmooth problem in which the objective function is Lipschitz continuous. We focus on the stochastic setting where the algorithm can access stochastic function value evaluations with heavy-tailed noise,…
Partition functions arise in a variety of settings, including conditional random fields, logistic regression, and latent gaussian models. In this paper, we consider semistochastic quadratic bound (SQB) methods for maximum likelihood…
In this paper, we study the low-rank matrix minimization problem, where the loss function is convex but nonsmooth and the penalty term is defined by the cardinality function. We first introduce an exact continuous relaxation, that is, both…
In this paper we consider stochastic composite convex optimization problems with the objective function satisfying a stochastic bounded gradient condition, with or without a quadratic functional growth property. These models include the…
We study the properties of stochastic approximation applied to a tame nondifferentiable function subject to constraints defined by a Riemannian manifold. The objective landscape of tame functions, arising in o-minimal topology extended to a…
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…
Operator learning, the approximation of mappings between infinite-dimensional function spaces using machine learning, has gained increasing research attention in recent years. Approximate operators, learned from data, can serve as efficient…