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We provide a first-order oracle complexity lower bound for finding stationary points of min-max optimization problems where the objective function is smooth, nonconvex in the minimization variable, and strongly concave in the maximization…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-04-20 Haochuan Li , Yi Tian , Jingzhao Zhang , Ali Jadbabaie

We consider stochastic unconstrained bilevel optimization problems when only the first-order gradient oracles are available. While numerous optimization methods have been proposed for tackling bilevel problems, existing methods either tend…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-01-27 Jeongyeol Kwon , Dohyun Kwon , Stephen Wright , Robert Nowak

We propose a novel zeroth-order optimization algorithm based on an efficient sampling strategy. Under mild global regularity conditions on the objective function, we establish non-asymptotic convergence rates for the proposed method.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-24 Xicheng Zhang

Bayesian optimisation is a powerful tool to solve expensive black-box problems, but fails when the stationary assumption made on the objective function is strongly violated, which is the case in particular for ill-conditioned or…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-12-06 Victor Picheny , Sattar Vakili , Artem Artemev

Consensus based optimization is a derivative-free particles-based method for the solution of global optimization problems. Several versions of the method have been proposed in the literature, and different convergence results have been…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-04 Stefania Bellavia , Greta Malaspina

Bayesian optimization is a sample-efficient method for solving expensive, black-box optimization problems. Stochastic programming concerns optimization under uncertainty where, typically, average performance is the quantity of interest. In…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-02-19 Jack M. Buckingham , Ivo Couckuyt , Juergen Branke

Stochastic first-order methods are standard for training large-scale machine learning models. Random behavior may cause a particular run of an algorithm to result in a highly suboptimal objective value, whereas theoretical guarantees are…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-02 Eduard Gorbunov , Marina Danilova , Innokentiy Shibaev , Pavel Dvurechensky , Alexander Gasnikov

In this paper, we present several new results on minimizing a nonsmooth and nonconvex function under a Lipschitz condition. Recent work shows that while the classical notion of Clarke stationarity is computationally intractable up to some…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-11-08 Michael I. Jordan , Tianyi Lin , Manolis Zampetakis

We analyze stochastic conditional gradient methods for constrained optimization problems arising in over-parametrized machine learning. We show that one could leverage the interpolation-like conditions satisfied by such models to obtain…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-01-28 Tesi Xiao , Krishnakumar Balasubramanian , Saeed Ghadimi

Black-box complexity is a complexity theoretic measure for how difficult a problem is to be optimized by a general purpose optimization algorithm. It is thus one of the few means trying to understand which problems are tractable for genetic…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2015-03-19 Benjamin Doerr , Timo Kötzing , Johannes Lengler , Carola Winzen

We present new algorithms for optimizing non-smooth, non-convex stochastic objectives based on a novel analysis technique. This improves the current best-known complexity for finding a $(\delta,\epsilon)$-stationary point from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-08 Ashok Cutkosky , Harsh Mehta , Francesco Orabona

We consider minimization of a smooth nonconvex objective function using an iterative algorithm based on Newton's method and the linear conjugate gradient algorithm, with explicit detection and use of negative curvature directions for the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-11-14 Clément W. Royer , Michael O'Neill , Stephen J. Wright

We consider the nonsmooth convex composition optimization problem where the objective is a composition of two finite-sum functions and analyze stochastic compositional variance reduced gradient (SCVRG) methods for them. SCVRG and its…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-08-01 Tianyi Lin , Chenyou Fan , Mengdi Wang

We consider Bayesian optimization of an expensive-to-evaluate black-box objective function, where we also have access to cheaper approximations of the objective. In general, such approximations arise in applications such as reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-11-16 Matthias Poloczek , Jialei Wang , Peter I. Frazier

We develop a new method HTBB for the multidimensional black-box approximation and gradient-free optimization, which is based on the low-rank hierarchical Tucker decomposition with the use of the MaxVol indices selection procedure. Numerical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-06 Gleb Ryzhakov , Andrei Chertkov , Artem Basharin , Ivan Oseledets

In this study, we investigate the problem of min-max continuous optimization in a black-box setting $\min_{x} \max_{y}f(x,y)$. A popular approach updates $x$ and $y$ simultaneously or alternatingly. However, two major limitations have been…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2022-04-07 Atsuhiro Miyagi , Kazuto Fukuchi , Jun Sakuma , Youhei Akimoto

We consider the problem of maximizing a submodular function with access to a noisy value oracle for the function instead of an exact value oracle. Similar to prior work, we assume that the noisy oracle is persistent in that multiple calls…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-01-01 Kshipra Bhawalkar , Yang Cai , Zhe Feng , Christopher Liaw , Tao Lin

This work studies constrained stochastic optimization problems where the objective and constraint functions are convex and expressed as compositions of stochastic functions. The problem arises in the context of fair classification, fair…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-13 Srujan Teja Thomdapu , Harshvardhan , Ketan Rajawat

This paper presents new first-order methods for achieving optimal oracle complexities in convex optimization with convex functional constraints. Oracle complexities are measured by the number of function and gradient evaluations. To achieve…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-17 Qi Deng , Guanghui Lan , Zhenwei Lin

We study first-order algorithms that are uniformly stable for empirical risk minimization (ERM) problems that are convex and smooth with respect to $p$-norms, $p \geq 1$. We propose a black-box reduction method that, by employing properties…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-23 Simon Vary , David Martínez-Rubio , Patrick Rebeschini