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Inverse optimization refers to the inference of unknown parameters of an optimization problem based on knowledge of its optimal solutions. This paper considers inverse optimization in the setting where measurements of the optimal solutions…
Two classes of methods have been proposed for escaping from saddle points with one using the second-order information carried by the Hessian and the other adding the noise into the first-order information. The existing analysis for…
The usual approach to developing and analyzing first-order methods for smooth convex optimization assumes that the gradient of the objective function is uniformly smooth with some Lipschitz constant $L$. However, in many settings the…
We consider the closely related problems of bandit convex optimization with two-point feedback, and zero-order stochastic convex optimization with two function evaluations per round. We provide a simple algorithm and analysis which is…
We consider max-min and min-max problems with objective functions that are possibly non-smooth, submodular with respect to the minimiser and concave with respect to the maximiser. We investigate the performance of a zeroth-order method…
In this paper, we leverage an information-theoretic upper bound on the maximum admissible level of noise (MALN) in convex Lipschitz-continuous zeroth-order optimisation to establish corresponding upper bounds for classes of strongly convex…
A very simple first-order algorithm is proposed for solving nonlinear optimization problems with deterministic nonlinear equality constraints. This algorithm adaptively selects steps in the plane tangent to the constraints or steps that…
We consider decentralized stochastic convex optimization on connected network, in which gradients of agents are unavailable and each agent can query only noisy function values of its own local objective. The goal is to minimize the average…
In a recent paper, Bubeck, Lee, and Singh introduced a new first order method for minimizing smooth strongly convex functions. Their geometric descent algorithm, largely inspired by the ellipsoid method, enjoys the optimal linear rate of…
We consider minimizing a function consisting of a quadratic term and a proximable term which is possibly nonconvex and nonsmooth. This problem is also known as scaled proximal operator. Despite its simple form, existing methods suffer from…
In compressed sensing a sparse vector is approximately retrieved from an under-determined equation system $Ax=b$. Exact retrieval would mean solving a large combinatorial problem which is well known to be NP-hard. For $b$ of the form…
We study distributed non-convex optimization on a time-varying multi-agent network. Each node has access to its own smooth local cost function, and the collective goal is to minimize the sum of these functions. We generalize the results…
We describe an active-set method for the minimization of an objective function $\phi$ that is the sum of a smooth convex function and an $\ell_1$-regularization term. A distinctive feature of the method is the way in which active-set…
We present a simple scheme for restarting first-order methods for convex optimization problems. Restarts are made based only on achieving specified decreases in objective values, the specified amounts being the same for all optimization…
We consider the problem of federated learning in a one-shot setting in which there are $m$ machines, each observing $n$ sample functions from an unknown distribution on non-convex loss functions. Let $F:[-1,1]^d\to\mathbb{R}$ be the…
We propose a novel adaptive, accelerated algorithm for the stochastic constrained convex optimization setting. Our method, which is inspired by the Mirror-Prox method, \emph{simultaneously} achieves the optimal rates for smooth/non-smooth…
We consider the problem of finding the minimizer of a convex function $F: \mathbb R^d \rightarrow \mathbb R$ of the form $F(w) := \sum_{i=1}^n f_i(w) + R(w)$ where a low-rank factorization of $\nabla^2 f_i(w)$ is readily available. We…
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…
Motivated by applications in single-cell biology and metagenomics, we investigate the problem of matrix reordering based on a noisy disordered monotone Toeplitz matrix model. We establish the fundamental statistical limit for this problem…
This paper addresses black-box smooth optimization problems, where the objective and constraint functions are not explicitly known but can be queried. The main goal of this work is to generate a sequence of feasible points converging…