Related papers: First Order Stochastic Optimization with Oblivious…
We study the performance of stochastic first-order methods for finding saddle points of convex-concave functions. A notorious challenge faced by such methods is that the gradients can grow arbitrarily large during optimization, which may…
In this paper, we present a stochastic gradient algorithm for minimizing a smooth objective function that is an expectation over noisy cost samples, and only the latter are observed for any given parameter. Our algorithm employs a gradient…
We develop stochastic first-order primal-dual algorithms to solve a class of convex-concave saddle-point problems. When the saddle function is strongly convex in the primal variable, we develop the first stochastic restart scheme for this…
In many derivative-free optimization algorithms, a sufficient decrease condition decides whether to accept a trial step in each iteration. This condition typically requires that the potential objective function value decrease of the trial…
In stochastic convex optimization problems, most existing adaptive methods rely on prior knowledge about the diameter bound $D$ when the smoothness or the Lipschitz constant is unknown. This often significantly affects performance as only a…
This paper considers the problem of asynchronous stochastic nonconvex optimization with heavy-tailed gradient noise and arbitrarily heterogeneous computation times across workers. We propose an asynchronous normalized stochastic gradient…
This paper provides a unifying theoretical framework for stochastic optimization algorithms by means of a latent stochastic variational problem. Using techniques from stochastic control, the solution to the variational problem is shown to…
We show that high-accuracy guarantees for log-concave sampling -- that is, iteration and query complexities which scale as $\mathrm{poly}\log(1/\delta)$, where $\delta$ is the desired target accuracy -- are achievable using stochastic…
We consider the problem of optimizing a high-dimensional convex function using stochastic zeroth-order queries. Under sparsity assumptions on the gradients or function values, we present two algorithms: a successive component/feature…
Stochastic optimization is a vital field in the realm of mathematical optimization, finding applications in diverse areas ranging from operations research to machine learning. In this paper, we introduce a novel first-order optimization…
We propose dynamic sampled stochastic approximation (SA) methods for stochastic optimization with a heavy-tailed distribution (with finite 2nd moment). The objective is the sum of a smooth convex function with a convex regularizer.…
We study stochastic nonconvex optimization under heavy-tailed noise. In this setting, the stochastic gradients only have bounded $p$-th central moment ($p$-BCM) for some $p \in (1,2]$. Building on the foundational work of Arjevani et al.…
During recent years the interest of optimization and machine learning communities in high-probability convergence of stochastic optimization methods has been growing. One of the main reasons for this is that high-probability complexity…
In this work, we show, for the well-studied problem of learning parity under noise, where a learner tries to learn $x=(x_1,\ldots,x_n) \in \{0,1\}^n$ from a stream of random linear equations over $\mathrm{F}_2$ that are correct with…
In this paper, our aim is to analyse the generalization capabilities of first-order methods for statistical learning in multiple, different yet related, scenarios including supervised learning, transfer learning, robust learning and…
In this work, we introduce a novel stochastic second-order method, within the framework of a non-monotone trust-region approach, for solving the unconstrained, nonlinear, and non-convex optimization problems arising in the training of deep…
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…
The ODE method has been a workhorse for algorithm design and analysis since the introduction of the stochastic approximation. It is now understood that convergence theory amounts to establishing robustness of Euler approximations for ODEs,…
Recently, the study of heavy-tailed noises in first-order nonconvex stochastic optimization has gotten a lot of attention since it was recognized as a more realistic condition as suggested by many empirical observations. Specifically, the…
Existing decentralized stochastic optimization methods assume the lower-level loss function is strongly convex and the stochastic gradient noise has finite variance. These strong assumptions typically are not satisfied in real-world machine…