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This paper presents an algorithmic framework for solving unconstrained stochastic optimization problems using only stochastic function evaluations. We employ central finite-difference based gradient estimation methods to approximate the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-14 Raghu Bollapragada , Cem Karamanli

Many problems encountered in science and engineering can be formulated as estimating a low-rank object (e.g., matrices and tensors) from incomplete, and possibly corrupted, linear measurements. Through the lens of matrix and tensor…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-11 Cong Ma , Xingyu Xu , Tian Tong , Yuejie Chi

This paper presents a novel stochastic gradient descent algorithm for constrained optimization. The proposed algorithm randomly samples constraints and components of the finite sum objective function and relies on a relaxed logarithmic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-13 Naum Dimitrieski , Jing Cao , Christian Ebenbauer

We develop and analyze an asynchronous algorithm for distributed convex optimization when the objective writes a sum of smooth functions, local to each worker, and a non-smooth function. Unlike many existing methods, our distributed…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-12-13 Konstantin Mishchenko , Franck Iutzeler , Jérôme Malick

Frequently, when dealing with many machine learning models, optimization problems appear to be challenging due to a limited understanding of the constructions and characterizations of the objective functions in these problems. Therefore,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-11-27 A. V. Gasnikov , M. S. Alkousa , A. V. Lobanov , Y. V. Dorn , F. S. Stonyakin , I. A. Kuruzov , S. R. Singh

This paper investigates distributed zeroth-order optimization for smooth nonconvex problems, targeting the trade-off between convergence rate and sampling cost per zeroth-order gradient estimation in current algorithms that use either the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-10 Huaiyi Mu , Yujie Tang , Jie Song , Zhongkui Li

We propose a new gradient descent algorithm with added stochastic terms for finding the global optimizers of nonconvex optimization problems. A key component in the algorithm is the adaptive tuning of the randomness based on the value of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-06-16 Björn Engquist , Kui Ren , Yunan Yang

Zeroth-order optimization is the process of minimizing an objective $f(x)$, given oracle access to evaluations at adaptively chosen inputs $x$. In this paper, we present two simple yet powerful GradientLess Descent (GLD) algorithms that do…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-05-20 Daniel Golovin , John Karro , Greg Kochanski , Chansoo Lee , Xingyou Song , Qiuyi Zhang

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method is popular for solving non-convex optimization problems in machine learning. This work investigates SGD from a viewpoint of graduated optimization, which is a widely applied approach for non-convex…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-08-15 Da Li , Jingjing Wu , Qingrun Zhang

The graduated optimization approach, also known as the continuation method, is a popular heuristic to solving non-convex problems that has received renewed interest over the last decade. Despite its popularity, very little is known in terms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-07-28 Elad Hazan , Kfir Y. Levy , Shai Shalev-Shwartz

In this paper, we consider gradient methods for minimizing smooth convex functions, which employ the information obtained at the previous iterations in order to accelerate the convergence towards the optimal solution. This information is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-06-02 Yurii Nesterov , Mihai I. Florea

We consider the problem of optimising the expected value of a loss functional over a nonlinear model class of functions, assuming that we have only access to realisations of the gradient of the loss. This is a classical task in statistics,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-02 Robert Gruhlke , Anthony Nouy , Philipp Trunschke

We consider $\min\{f(x):g(x) \le 0, ~x\in X\},$ where $X$ is a compact convex subset of $\RR^m$, and $f$ and $g$ are continuous convex functions defined on an open neighbourhood of $X$. We work in the setting of derivative-free…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2012-10-25 Heinz H. Bauschke , Warren L. Hare , Walaa M. Moursi

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

There has been a growing effort in studying the distributed optimization problem over a network. The objective is to optimize a global function formed by a sum of local functions, using only local computation and communication. Literature…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-05-02 Guannan Qu , Na Li

In this work, we consider smooth unconstrained optimization problems and we deal with the class of gradient methods with momentum, i.e., descent algorithms where the search direction is defined as a linear combination of the current…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-04 Matteo Lapucci , Giampaolo Liuzzi , Stefano Lucidi , Davide Pucci , Marco Sciandrone

We introduce a derivative-free global optimization algorithm that efficiently computes minima for various classes of one-dimensional functions, including non-convex, and non-smooth functions.This algorithm numerically approximates the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-08-21 Alexandra A. Gomes , Diogo A. Gomes

Gradient-based iterative optimization methods are the workhorse of modern machine learning. They crucially rely on careful tuning of parameters like learning rate and momentum. However, one typically sets them using heuristic approaches…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-05 Dravyansh Sharma

In this letter, we study distributed optimization, where a network of agents, abstracted as a directed graph, collaborates to minimize the average of locally-known convex functions. Most of the existing approaches over directed graphs are…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-06-08 Ran Xin , Usman A. Khan

We consider the problem of minimizing a convex function over a closed convex set, with Projected Gradient Descent (PGD). We propose a fully parameter-free version of AdaGrad, which is adaptive to the distance between the initialization and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-06-01 Evgenii Chzhen , Christophe Giraud , Gilles Stoltz