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In this paper we address the convergence of stochastic approximation when the functions to be minimized are not convex and nonsmooth. We show that the "mean-limit" approach to the convergence which leads, for smooth problems, to the ODE…
We focus on constrained, $L$-smooth, potentially stochastic and nonconvex-nonconcave min-max problems either satisfying $\rho$-cohypomonotonicity or admitting a solution to the $\rho$-weakly Minty Variational Inequality (MVI), where larger…
There are much recent interests in solving noncovnex min-max optimization problems due to its broad applications in many areas including machine learning, networked resource allocations, and distributed optimization. Perhaps, the most…
This paper proposes a new family of algorithms for training neural networks (NNs). These are based on recent developments in the field of non-convex optimization, going under the general name of successive convex approximation (SCA)…
We analyze stochastic gradient algorithms for optimizing nonconvex, nonsmooth finite-sum problems. In particular, the objective function is given by the summation of a differentiable (possibly nonconvex) component, together with a possibly…
In this paper, we consider non-convex stochastic bilevel optimization (SBO) problems that have many applications in machine learning. Although numerous studies have proposed stochastic algorithms for solving these problems, they are limited…
We consider the problem of optimizing an approximately convex function over a bounded convex set in $\mathbb{R}^n$ using only function evaluations. The problem is reduced to sampling from an \emph{approximately} log-concave distribution…
In recent years, there has been considerable interest in designing stochastic first-order algorithms to tackle finite-sum smooth minimax problems. To obtain the gradient estimates, one typically relies on the uniform…
Decentralized minimax optimization has been actively studied in the past few years due to its application in a wide range of machine learning models. However, the current theoretical understanding of its convergence rate is far from…
In this work, we consider constrained stochastic optimization problems under hidden convexity, i.e., those that admit a convex reformulation via non-linear (but invertible) map $c(\cdot)$. A number of non-convex problems ranging from…
Low-rank and nonsmooth matrix optimization problems capture many fundamental tasks in statistics and machine learning. While significant progress has been made in recent years in developing efficient methods for \textit{smooth} low-rank…
In this paper, we develop a unified framework able to certify both exponential and subexponential convergence rates for a wide range of iterative first-order optimization algorithms. To this end, we construct a family of parameter-dependent…
In this article we propose a method for solving unconstrained optimization problems with convex and Lipschitz continuous objective functions. By making use of the Moreau envelopes of the functions occurring in the objective, we smooth the…
This paper studies simple bilevel problems, where a convex upper-level function is minimized over the optimal solutions of a convex lower-level problem. We first show the fundamental difficulty of simple bilevel problems, that the…
Sparse learning is a very important tool for mining useful information and patterns from high dimensional data. Non-convex non-smooth regularized learning problems play essential roles in sparse learning, and have drawn extensive attentions…
We consider the problem of minimizing a convex objective which is the sum of a smooth part, with Lipschitz continuous gradient, and a nonsmooth part. Inspired by various applications, we focus on the case when the nonsmooth part is a…
Stochastic gradient method (SGM) has been popularly applied to solve optimization problems with objective that is stochastic or an average of many functions. Most existing works on SGMs assume that the underlying problem is unconstrained or…
Non-convex optimization problems are ubiquitous in machine learning, especially in Deep Learning. While such complex problems can often be successfully optimized in practice by using stochastic gradient descent (SGD), theoretical analysis…
We consider solving high-order semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations of nonconvex polynomial optimization problems (POPs) that often admit degenerate rank-one optimal solutions. Instead of solving the SDP alone, we propose a new…
In machine learning, nonconvex optimization problems with multiple local optimums are often encountered. Graduated Optimization Algorithm (GOA) is a popular heuristic method to obtain global optimums of nonconvex problems through…