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The goal of this paper is to debunk and dispel the magic behind black-box optimizers and stochastic optimizers. It aims to build a solid foundation on how and why the techniques work. This manuscript crystallizes this knowledge by deriving…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-15 Jun Lu

The optimization of parametric quantum circuits is technically hindered by three major obstacles: the non-convex nature of the objective function, noisy gradient evaluations, and the presence of barren plateaus. As a result, the selection…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2025-04-24 Théo Lisart-Liebermann , Arcesio Castañeda Medina

This paper considers stochastic convex optimization problems where the objective and constraint functions involve expectations with respect to the data indices or environmental variables, in addition to deterministic convex constraints on…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-07-21 Zeeshan Akhtar , Amrit Singh Bedi , Ketan Rajawat

Differentiable optimization layers enable learning systems to make decisions by solving embedded optimization problems. However, computing gradients via implicit differentiation requires solving a linear system with Hessian terms, which is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-03 Zihao Zhao , Kai-Chia Mo , Shing-Hei Ho , Brandon Amos , Kai Wang

Black-box optimization (BBO) has become increasingly relevant for tackling complex decision-making problems, especially in public policy domains such as police redistricting. However, its broader application in public policymaking is…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-01-23 Wenqian Xing , JungHo Lee , Chong Liu , Shixiang Zhu

We lower bound the complexity of finding $\epsilon$-stationary points (with gradient norm at most $\epsilon$) using stochastic first-order methods. In a well-studied model where algorithms access smooth, potentially non-convex functions…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-03-01 Yossi Arjevani , Yair Carmon , John C. Duchi , Dylan J. Foster , Nathan Srebro , Blake Woodworth

When gradient-based methods are impractical, black-box optimization (BBO) provides a valuable alternative. However, BBO often struggles with high-dimensional problems and limited trial budgets. In this work, we propose a novel approach…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-10-03 Riccardo Busetto , Manas Mejari , Marco Forgione , Alberto Bemporad , Dario Piga

Single-objective black box optimization (also known as zeroth-order optimization) is the process of minimizing a scalar objective $f(x)$, given evaluations at adaptively chosen inputs $x$. In this paper, we consider multi-objective…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-11 Daniel Golovin , Qiuyi Zhang

We consider the problem of minimizing a $d$-dimensional Lipschitz convex function using a stochastic gradient oracle. We introduce and motivate a setting where the noise of the stochastic gradient is isotropic in that it is bounded in every…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-24 Annie Marsden , Liam O'Carroll , Aaron Sidford , Chenyi Zhang

Arising in semi-parametric statistics, control applications, and as sub-problems in global optimization methods, certain optimization problems can have objective functions requiring numerical integration to evaluate, yet gradient function…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-03-06 Christian Varner , Vivak Patel

Bilevel optimization has been developed for many machine learning tasks with large-scale and high-dimensional data. This paper considers a constrained bilevel optimization problem, where the lower-level optimization problem is convex with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-22 Siyuan Xu , Minghui Zhu

A stochastic-gradient-based interior-point algorithm for minimizing a continuously differentiable objective function (that may be nonconvex) subject to bound constraints is presented, analyzed, and demonstrated through experimental results.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-15 Frank E. Curtis , Vyacheslav Kungurtsev , Daniel P. Robinson , Qi Wang

In the learning to learn (L2L) framework, we cast the design of optimization algorithms as a machine learning problem and use deep neural networks to learn the update rules. In this paper, we extend the L2L framework to zeroth-order (ZO)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-10 Yangjun Ruan , Yuanhao Xiong , Sashank Reddi , Sanjiv Kumar , Cho-Jui Hsieh

In recent years, solving optimization problems involving black-box simulators has become a point of focus for the machine learning community due to their ubiquity in science and engineering. The simulators describe a forward process…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-07 Fabio Valerio Massoli , Tim Bakker , Thomas Hehn , Tribhuvanesh Orekondy , Arash Behboodi

Optimization problems with uncertain black-box constraints, modeled by warped Gaussian processes, have recently been considered in the Bayesian optimization setting. This work introduces a new class of constraints in which the same…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-06-16 Johannes Wiebe , Inês Cecílio , Jonathan Dunlop , Ruth Misener

Learning models with discrete latent variables using stochastic gradient descent remains a challenge due to the high variance of gradient estimates. Modern variance reduction techniques mostly consider categorical distributions and have…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-25 Artyom Gadetsky , Kirill Struminsky , Christopher Robinson , Novi Quadrianto , Dmitry Vetrov

We present a novel gradient-free algorithm to solve a convex stochastic optimization problem, such as those encountered in medicine, physics, and machine learning (e.g., adversarial multi-armed bandit problem), where the objective function…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-11-22 Georgii Bychkov , Darina Dvinskikh , Anastasia Antsiferova , Alexander Gasnikov , Aleksandr Lobanov

This paper introduces a novel optimization algorithm designed for nonlinear least-squares problems. The method is derived by preconditioning the gradient descent direction using the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) of the Jacobian. This…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2026-02-11 Zhipeng Chang , Wenrui Hao , Nian Liu

This paper considers stochastic optimization problems for a large class of objective functions, including convex and continuous submodular. Stochastic proximal gradient methods have been widely used to solve such problems; however, their…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-11-13 Aryan Mokhtari , Hamed Hassani , Amin Karbasi

The recently introduced Gradient Methods with Memory use a subset of the past oracle information to create an accurate model of the objective function that enables them to surpass the Gradient Method in practical performance. The model…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-01-30 Mihai I. Florea