Related papers: Accelerated Mirror Descent for Non-Euclidean Star-…
For solving pseudo-convex global optimization problems, we present a novel fully adaptive steepest descent method (or ASDM) without any hard-to-estimate parameters. For the step-size regulation in an $\varepsilon$-normalized direction, we…
We propose STARS, a randomized derivative-free algorithm for unconstrained optimization when the function evaluations are contaminated with random noise. STARS takes dynamic, noise-adjusted smoothing step-sizes that minimize the…
We present new policy mirror descent (PMD) methods for solving reinforcement learning (RL) problems with either strongly convex or general convex regularizers. By exploring the structural properties of these overall highly nonconvex…
Recently there were proposed some innovative convex optimization concepts, namely, relative smoothness [1] and relative strong convexity [2,3]. These approaches have significantly expanded the class of applicability of gradient-type methods…
Recent years have seen a flurry of activities in designing provably efficient nonconvex procedures for solving statistical estimation problems. Due to the highly nonconvex nature of the empirical loss, state-of-the-art procedures often…
We study the minimization of a convex function $f(X)$ over the set of $n\times n$ positive semi-definite matrices, but when the problem is recast as $\min_U g(U) := f(UU^\top)$, with $U \in \mathbb{R}^{n \times r}$ and $r \leq n$. We study…
We consider the problem of minimizing a function, which is the sum of a linear function and a composition of a strongly convex function with a linear transformation, over a compact polyhedral set. Jaggi and Lacoste-Julien [14] showed that…
Variational inequalities play a key role in machine learning research, such as generative adversarial networks, reinforcement learning, adversarial training, and generative models. This paper is devoted to the constrained variational…
Minimizing a convex function of a measure with a sparsity-inducing penalty is a typical problem arising, e.g., in sparse spikes deconvolution or two-layer neural networks training. We show that this problem can be solved by discretizing the…
Non-convex optimization plays a key role in a growing number of machine learning applications. This motivates the identification of specialized structure that enables sharper theoretical analysis. One such identified structure is…
We consider the fundamental problem in non-convex optimization of efficiently reaching a stationary point. In contrast to the convex case, in the long history of this basic problem, the only known theoretical results on first-order…
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…
Constrained non-convex optimization is fundamentally challenging, as global solutions are generally intractable and constraint qualifications may not hold. However, in many applications, including safe policy optimization in control and…
Mirror descent plays a crucial role in constrained optimization and acceleration schemes, along with its corresponding low-resolution ordinary differential equations (ODEs) framework have been proposed. However, the low-resolution ODEs are…
We present theoretical results on the convergence of \emph{non-convex} accelerated gradient descent in matrix factorization models with $\ell_2$-norm loss. The purpose of this work is to study the effects of acceleration in non-convex…
We develop a rigorous framework for global non-convex optimization by reformulating the minimization problem as a discounted infinite-horizon optimal control problem. For non-convex, continuous, and possibly non-smooth objective functions…
Based on a result by Taylor, Hendrickx, and Glineur (J. Optim. Theory Appl., 178(2):455--476, 2018) on the attainable convergence rate of gradient descent for smooth and strongly convex functions in terms of function values, an elementary…
A wide range of applications arising in machine learning and signal processing can be cast as convex optimization problems. These problems are often ill-posed, i.e., the optimal solution lacks a desired property such as uniqueness or…
We perform the first tight convergence analysis of the gradient method with varying step sizes when applied to smooth hypoconvex (weakly convex) functions. Hypoconvex functions are smooth nonconvex functions whose curvature is bounded and…
The use of min-max optimization in adversarial training of deep neural network classifiers and training of generative adversarial networks has motivated the study of nonconvex-nonconcave optimization objectives, which frequently arise in…