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Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization with ordinal feedback has emerged as a fundamental problem in modern machine learning systems, particularly in human-in-the-loop settings such as reinforcement learning from human feedback, preference…
Zhang et al. introduced a novel modification of Goldstein's classical subgradient method, with an efficiency guarantee of $O(\varepsilon^{-4})$ for minimizing Lipschitz functions. Their work, however, makes use of a nonstandard subgradient…
In this study, we consider an optimization problem with uncertainty dependent on decision variables, which has recently attracted attention due to its importance in machine learning and pricing applications. In this problem, the gradient of…
We prove convergence rates of Stochastic Zeroth-order Gradient Descent (SZGD) algorithms for Lojasiewicz functions. The SZGD algorithm iterates as \begin{align*} \mathbf{x}_{t+1} = \mathbf{x}_t - \eta_t \widehat{\nabla} f (\mathbf{x}_t),…
Minimax optimization recently is widely applied in many machine learning tasks such as generative adversarial networks, robust learning and reinforcement learning. In the paper, we study a class of nonconvex-nonconcave minimax optimization…
Locating proximal points is a component of numerous minimization algorithms. This work focuses on developing a method to find the proximal point of a convex function at a point, given an inexact oracle. Our method assumes that exact…
Zero-order (ZO) optimization is a powerful tool for dealing with realistic constraints. On the other hand, the gradient-tracking (GT) technique proved to be an efficient method for distributed optimization aiming to achieve consensus.…
This paper discusses how to find the global minimum of functions that are summations of small polynomials (``small'' means involving a small number of variables). Some sparse sum of squares (SOS) techniques are proposed. We compare their…
Saddle-point problems have recently gained increased attention from the machine learning community, mainly due to applications in training Generative Adversarial Networks using stochastic gradients. At the same time, in some applications…
In this paper we present an inexact zeroth-order method suitable for the solution nonsmooth and nonconvex stochastic composite optimization problems, in which the objective is split into a real-valued Lipschitz continuous stochastic…
Given a separation oracle $\mathsf{SO}$ for a convex function $f$ defined on $\mathbb{R}^n$ that has an integral minimizer inside a box with radius $R$, we show how to find an exact minimizer of $f$ using at most (a) $O(n (n \log \log…
We introduce a stochastic global optimization method based on random walks on Grassmannian manifolds. To minimize a continuous objective $\ell:\mathbb{R}^d\rightarrow\mathbb{R}$, the method repeatedly samples random $k$-dimensional linear…
The purpose of this paper is to extend the full convergence results of the classic GLL-type (Grippo-Lampariello-Lucidi) nonmonotone methods to nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization. We propose a novel iterative framework for the minimization…
The proximal gradient method is a standard approach for solving composite minimization problems in which the objective function is the sum of a continuously differentiable function and a lower semicontinuous, extended-valued function. The…
In this paper, we study optimization methods consisting of iteratively minimizing surrogates of an objective function. By proposing several algorithmic variants and simple convergence analyses, we make two main contributions. First, we…
This paper focuses on the study of a mathematical program with equilibrium constraints, where the objective and the constraint functions are all polynomials. We present a method for finding its global minimizers and global minimum using a…
We consider the problem of minimizing the sum of two convex functions. One of those functions has Lipschitz-continuous gradients, and can be accessed via stochastic oracles, whereas the other is "simple". We provide a Bregman-type algorithm…
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, we consider two types of problems that have some similarity in their structure, namely, min-min problems and min-max saddle-point problems. Our approach is based on considering the outer minimization problem as a minimization…
In this paper we consider skew bisubmodular functions as introduced in [9]. We construct a convex extension of a skew bisubmodular function which we call Lov\'asz extension in correspondence to the submodular case. We use this extension to…