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The success of minimax learning problems of generative adversarial networks (GANs) has been observed to depend on the minimax optimization algorithm used for their training. This dependence is commonly attributed to the convergence speed…
Many machine learning tasks can be formulated as a stochastic compositional optimization (SCO) problem such as reinforcement learning, AUC maximization, and meta-learning, where the objective function involves a nested composition…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) has been found to be surprisingly effective in training a variety of deep neural networks. However, there is still a lack of understanding on how and why SGD can train these complex networks towards a…
Modern machine learning is trained by stochastic gradient descent (SGD), whose performance critically depends on how the learning rate (LR) is adjusted and decreased over time. Yet existing LR regimes may be intricate, or need to tune one…
Commonly used optimization algorithms often show a trade-off between good generalization and fast training times. For instance, stochastic gradient descent (SGD) tends to have good generalization; however, adaptive gradient methods have…
We study local complexity measures for stochastic convex optimization problems, providing a local minimax theory analogous to that of H\'{a}jek and Le Cam for classical statistical problems. We give complementary optimality results,…
Characterizing and understanding the dynamics of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) around saddle points remains an open problem. We first show that saddle points in neural networks can be divided into two types, among which the Type-II…
This paper is devoted to the study of tilt stability in finite dimensional optimization via the approach of using the subgradient graphical derivative. We establish a new characterization of tilt-stable local minimizers for a broad class of…
We study the implicit bias of generic optimization methods, such as mirror descent, natural gradient descent, and steepest descent with respect to different potentials and norms, when optimizing underdetermined linear regression or…
We provide sufficient conditions for instability of the subgradient method with constant step size around a local minimum of a locally Lipschitz semi-algebraic function. They are satisfied by several spurious local minima arising in robust…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) on a low-rank factorization is commonly employed to speed up matrix problems including matrix completion, subspace tracking, and SDP relaxation. In this paper, we exhibit a step size scheme for SGD on a…
This paper proposes a stochastic gradient descent method with an adaptive Gaussian noise term for the global minimization of nearly convex functions, which are nonconvex and possess multiple strict local minimizers. The noise term,…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is the workhorse algorithm of deep learning technology. At each step of the training phase, a mini batch of samples is drawn from the training dataset and the weights of the neural network are adjusted…
The massive size of modern neural networks has motivated substantial recent interest in neural network quantization. We introduce Stochastic Markov Gradient Descent (SMGD), a discrete optimization method applicable to training quantized…
Offline reinforcement learning and offline inverse reinforcement learning aim to recover near-optimal value functions or reward models from a fixed batch of logged trajectories, yet current practice still struggles to enforce Bellman…
We study the dynamics of a continuous-time model of the Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) for the least-square problem. Indeed, pursuing the work of Li et al. (2019), we analyze Stochastic Differential Equations (SDEs) that model SGD either…
We study a variation of vanilla stochastic gradient descent where the optimizer only has access to a Markovian sampling scheme. These schemes encompass applications that range from decentralized optimization with a random walker (token…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is a fundamental algorithm in machine learning, representing the optimization backbone for training several classic models, from regression to neural networks. Given the recent practical focus on…
Sign Gradient Descent (SignGD) is a simple yet robust optimization method, widely used in machine learning for its resilience to gradient noise and compatibility with low-precision computations. While its empirical performance is well…
This paper considers a class of reinforcement-learning that belongs to the family of Learning Automata and provides a stochastic-stability analysis in strategic-form games. For this class of dynamics, convergence to pure Nash equilibria has…