Related papers: A Pseudo-Gradient Approach for Model-free Markov C…
It seems that in the current age, computers, computation, and data have an increasingly important role to play in scientific research and discovery. This is reflected in part by the rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence,…
We consider (stochastic) softmax policy gradient (PG) methods for bandits and tabular Markov decision processes (MDPs). While the PG objective is non-concave, recent research has used the objective's smoothness and gradient domination…
Optimization and control of complex unsteady flows remains an important challenge due to the large cost of performing a function evaluation, i.e. a full computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. Reducing the number of required function…
This paper delves into stochastic optimization problems that involve Markovian noise. We present a unified approach for the theoretical analysis of first-order gradient methods for stochastic optimization and variational inequalities. Our…
Expensive multi-objective optimization problems (EMOPs) are common in real-world scenarios where evaluating objective functions is costly and involves extensive computations or physical experiments. Current Pareto set learning methods for…
Motivated by applications of large embedding models, we study differentially private (DP) optimization problems under sparsity of individual gradients. We start with new near-optimal bounds for the classic mean estimation problem but with…
The paper looks at a scaled variant of the stochastic gradient descent algorithm for the matrix completion problem. Specifically, we propose a novel matrix-scaling of the partial derivatives that acts as an efficient preconditioning for the…
We study stochastic optimization algorithms for constrained nonconvex stochastic optimization problems with Markovian data. In particular, we focus on the case when the transition kernel of the Markov chain is state-dependent. Such…
We propose a randomized first order optimization method--SEGA (SkEtched GrAdient method)-- which progressively throughout its iterations builds a variance-reduced estimate of the gradient from random linear measurements (sketches) of the…
This paper studies the performative prediction problem where a learner aims to minimize the expected loss with a decision-dependent data distribution. Such setting is motivated when outcomes can be affected by the prediction model, e.g., in…
Large-scale non-convex sparsity-constrained problems have recently gained extensive attention. Most existing deterministic optimization methods (e.g., GraSP) are not suitable for large-scale and high-dimensional problems, and thus…
To efficiently manage serverless computing platforms, a key aspect is the auto-scaling of services, i.e., the set of computational resources allocated to a service adapts over time as a function of the traffic demand. The objective is to…
In this report, we study decentralized stochastic optimization to minimize a sum of smooth and strongly convex cost functions when the functions are distributed over a directed network of nodes. In contrast to the existing work, we use…
In this paper we present the greedy step averaging(GSA) method, a parameter-free stochastic optimization algorithm for a variety of machine learning problems. As a gradient-based optimization method, GSA makes use of the information from…
In this paper we study the effect of stochastic errors on two constrained incremental sub-gradient algorithms. We view the incremental sub-gradient algorithms as decentralized network optimization algorithms as applied to minimize a sum of…
This paper considers decentralized minimization of $N:=nm$ smooth non-convex cost functions equally divided over a directed network of $n$ nodes. Specifically, we describe a stochastic first-order gradient method, called GT-SARAH, that…
Principal component analysis (PCA) is a widely used dimension reduction technique in machine learning and multivariate statistics. To improve the interpretability of PCA, various approaches to obtain sparse principal direction loadings have…
Motivated by the super-diffusivity of self-repelling random walk, which has roots in statistical physics, this paper develops a new perturbation mechanism for optimization algorithms. In this mechanism, perturbations are adapted to the…
Sequential robot manipulation tasks require finding collision-free trajectories that satisfy geometric constraints across multiple object interactions in potentially high-dimensional configuration spaces. Solving these problems in real-time…
Stochastic gradient Markov chain Monte Carlo (SG-MCMC) methods are Bayesian analogs to popular stochastic optimization methods; however, this connection is not well studied. We explore this relationship by applying simulated annealing to an…