Related papers: Random Scaling and Momentum for Non-smooth Non-con…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a simple and popular method to solve stochastic optimization problems which arise in machine learning. For strongly convex problems, its convergence rate was known to be O(\log(T)/T), by running SGD for…
We study distributed stochastic nonconvex optimization in multi-agent networks. We introduce a novel algorithmic framework for the distributed minimization of the sum of the expected value of a smooth (possibly nonconvex) function (the…
In this paper, we study the implicit regularization of the gradient descent algorithm in homogeneous neural networks, including fully-connected and convolutional neural networks with ReLU or LeakyReLU activations. In particular, we study…
We study the problem of non-convex optimization using Stochastic Gradient Langevin Dynamics (SGLD). SGLD is a natural and popular variation of stochastic gradient descent where at each step, appropriately scaled Gaussian noise is added. To…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method is popular for solving non-convex optimization problems in machine learning. This work investigates SGD from a viewpoint of graduated optimization, which is a widely applied approach for non-convex…
Various optimal gradient-based algorithms have been developed for smooth nonconvex optimization. However, many nonconvex machine learning problems do not belong to the class of smooth functions and therefore the existing algorithms are…
In this work we consider the stochastic minimization of nonsmooth convex loss functions, a central problem in machine learning. We propose a novel algorithm called Accelerated Nonsmooth Stochastic Gradient Descent (ANSGD), which exploits…
Stochastic Gradient Langevin Dynamics (SGLD) is a powerful algorithm for optimizing a non-convex objective, where a controlled and properly scaled Gaussian noise is added to the stochastic gradients to steer the iterates towards a global…
The graduated optimization approach is a method for finding global optimal solutions for nonconvex functions by using a function smoothing operation with stochastic noise. This paper makes three contributions regarding graduated…
This work proposes an accelerated first-order algorithm we call the Robust Momentum Method for optimizing smooth strongly convex functions. The algorithm has a single scalar parameter that can be tuned to trade off robustness to gradient…
Random reshuffling with momentum (RRM) corresponds to the SGD optimizer with momentum option enabled, as found in many machine learning libraries like PyTorch and TensorFlow. Despite its widespread use, the convergence properties of RRM do…
Gradient clipping is a commonly used technique to stabilize the training process of neural networks. A growing body of studies has shown that gradient clipping is a promising technique for dealing with the heavy-tailed behavior that emerged…
The article discusses distributed gradient-descent algorithms for computing local and global minima in nonconvex optimization. For local optimization, we focus on distributed stochastic gradient descent (D-SGD)--a simple network-based…
While optimizing convex objective (loss) functions has been a powerhouse for machine learning for at least two decades, non-convex loss functions have attracted fast growing interests recently, due to many desirable properties such as…
Classical assumptions like strong convexity and Lipschitz smoothness often fail to capture the nature of deep learning optimization problems, which are typically non-convex and non-smooth, making traditional analyses less applicable. This…
This paper proposes and analyzes a communication-efficient distributed optimization framework for general nonconvex nonsmooth signal processing and machine learning problems under an asynchronous protocol. At each iteration, worker machines…
We study the stochastic optimization problem from a continuous-time perspective, with a focus on the Stochastic Gradient Descent with Momentum (SGDM) method. We show that the trajectory of SGDM, despite its \emph{stochastic} nature,…
Momentum methods are now used pervasively within the machine learning community for training non-convex models such as deep neural networks. Empirically, they out perform traditional stochastic gradient descent (SGD) approaches. In this…
Randomly initialized first-order optimization algorithms are the method of choice for solving many high-dimensional nonconvex problems in machine learning, yet general theoretical guarantees cannot rule out convergence to critical points of…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a standard optimization method to minimize a training error with respect to network parameters in modern neural network learning. However, it typically suffers from proliferation of saddle points in the…