Related papers: Parameter-free Clipped Gradient Descent Meets Poly…
In this paper, we revisit a classical adaptive stepsize strategy for gradient descent: the Polyak stepsize (PolyakGD), originally proposed in Polyak (1969). We study the convergence behavior of PolyakGD from two perspectives: tight…
Reinforcement learning lies at the intersection of several challenges. Many applications of interest involve extremely large state spaces, requiring function approximation to enable tractable computation. In addition, the learner has only a…
Policy gradient is a widely utilized and foundational algorithm in the field of reinforcement learning (RL). Renowned for its convergence guarantees and stability compared to other RL algorithms, its practical application is often hindered…
We propose a new first-order method for minimizing nonconvex functions with a Lipschitz continuous gradient and Hessian. The proposed method is an accelerated gradient descent with two restart mechanisms and finds a solution where the…
The stochastic Polyak step size (SPS) has proven to be a promising choice for stochastic gradient descent (SGD), delivering competitive performance relative to state-of-the-art methods on smooth convex and non-convex optimization problems,…
This paper revisits the Polyak step size schedule for convex optimization problems, proving that a simple variant of it simultaneously attains near optimal convergence rates for the gradient descent algorithm, for all ranges of strong…
Tuning the step size of stochastic gradient descent is tedious and error prone. This has motivated the development of methods that automatically adapt the step size using readily available information. In this paper, we consider the family…
A new type of stepsize, which was recently introduced by Liu and Liu (Optimization, 67(3), 427-440, 2018), is called approximately optimal stepsize and is quit efficient for gradient method. Interestingly, all gradient methods can be…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is one of the many iterative optimization methods that are widely used in solving machine learning problems. These methods display valuable properties and attract researchers and industrial machine learning…
This paper introduces new parameter-free first-order methods for convex optimization problems in which the objective function exhibits H\"{o}lder smoothness. Inspired by the recently proposed distance-over-gradient (DOG) technique, we…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for strongly convex functions converges at the rate $\bO(1/k)$. However, achieving good results in practice requires tuning the parameters (for example the learning rate) of the algorithm. In this paper we…
This paper proposes a novel parameter selection strategy for kernel-based gradient descent (KGD) algorithms, integrating bias-variance analysis with the splitting method. We introduce the concept of empirical effective dimension to quantify…
We study the problem of parameter-free stochastic optimization, inquiring whether, and under what conditions, do fully parameter-free methods exist: these are methods that achieve convergence rates competitive with optimally tuned methods,…
In machine learning applications, it is well known that carefully designed learning rate (step size) schedules can significantly improve the convergence of commonly used first-order optimization algorithms. Therefore how to set step size…
Stochastic gradient descent with momentum, also known as Stochastic Heavy Ball method (SHB), is one of the most popular algorithms for solving large-scale stochastic optimization problems in various machine learning tasks. In practical…
In 1963 Boris Polyak suggested a particular step size for gradient descent methods, now known as the Polyak step size, that he later adapted to subgradient methods. The Polyak step size requires knowledge of the optimal value of the…
We develop new sub-optimality bounds for gradient descent (GD) that depend on the conditioning of the objective along the path of optimization rather than on global, worst-case constants. Key to our proofs is directional smoothness, a…
Working with any gradient-based machine learning algorithm involves the tedious task of tuning the optimizer's hyperparameters, such as its step size. Recent work has shown how the step size can itself be optimized alongside the model…
We propose an adaptive step-size rule for decentralized optimization. Choosing a step-size that balances convergence and stability is challenging. This is amplified in the decentralized setting as agents observe only local (possibly…
In the recent years, various gradient descent algorithms including the methods of gradient descent, gradient descent with momentum, adaptive gradient (AdaGrad), root-mean-square propagation (RMSProp) and adaptive moment estimation (Adam)…