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In this paper we analyze the behaviour of the stochastic gradient descent (SGD), a widely used method in supervised learning for optimizing neural network weights via a minimization of non-convex loss functions. Since the pioneering work of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-13 Davide Barbieri , Matteo Bonforte , Peio Ibarrondo

In deep learning, stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and its momentum-based variants are widely used for optimization. However, the internal dynamics of these methods remain underexplored. In this paper, we analyze gradient behavior through…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-11 Zhipeng Yao , Rui Yu , Guisong Chang , Ying Li , Yu Zhang , Dazhou Li

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is one of the most widely used optimization methods for parallel and distributed processing of large datasets. One of the key limitations of distributed SGD is the need to regularly communicate the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-10-25 Xiaojian Xu , Ulugbek S. Kamilov

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a standard optimization method to minimize a training error with respect to network parameters in modern neural network learning. However, it typically suffers from proliferation of saddle points in the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-11-23 Haiping Huang , Taro Toyoizumi

We study nonconvex finite-sum problems and analyze stochastic variance reduced gradient (SVRG) methods for them. SVRG and related methods have recently surged into prominence for convex optimization given their edge over stochastic gradient…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-04-06 Sashank J. Reddi , Ahmed Hefny , Suvrit Sra , Barnabas Poczos , Alex Smola

We consider a distributed learning problem in which the computation is carried out on a system consisting of a master node and multiple worker nodes. In such systems, the existence of slow-running machines called stragglers will cause a…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2019-01-16 Shunsuke Horii , Takahiro Yoshida , Manabu Kobayashi , Toshiyasu Matsushima

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a widely adopted iterative method for optimizing differentiable objective functions. In this paper, we propose and discuss a novel approach to scale up SGD in applications involving non-convex functions…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-10-07 Saad Mohamad , Hamad Alamri , Abdelhamid Bouchachia

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) methods see many uses in optimization problems. Modifications to the algorithm, such as momentum-based SGD methods have been known to produce better results in certain cases. Much of this, however, is due…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-22 Eric Lu

We investigate the convergence rates and data sample sizes required for training a machine learning model using a stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm, where data points are sampled based on either their loss value or uncertainty…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-26 Daniel Haimovich , Dima Karamshuk , Fridolin Linder , Niek Tax , Milan Vojnovic

Learning probability distributions on the weights of neural networks (NNs) has recently proven beneficial in many applications. Bayesian methods, such as Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD), offer an elegant framework to reason about…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-04-03 Ruiyi Zhang , Chunyuan Li , Changyou Chen , Lawrence Carin

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a ubiquitous algorithm for a variety of machine learning problems. Researchers and industry have developed several techniques to optimize SGD's runtime performance, including asynchronous execution and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-10-06 Christopher De Sa , Ce Zhang , Kunle Olukotun , Christopher Ré

Training-free diffusion guidance offers a flexible framework for leveraging off-the-shelf classifiers without additional training. Yet, current approaches hinge on posterior approximations via Tweedie's formula, which often yield unreliable…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Van Khoa Nguyen , Lionel Blondé , Alexandros Kalousis

We introduce a doubly stochastic proximal gradient algorithm for optimizing a finite average of smooth convex functions, whose gradients depend on numerically expensive expectations. Our main motivation is the acceleration of the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-11-09 Massil Achab , Agathe Guilloux , Stéphane Gaïffas , Emmanuel Bacry

Particle-optimization-based sampling (POS) is a recently developed effective sampling technique that interactively updates a set of particles. A representative algorithm is the Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD). We prove, under…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-03-31 Jianyi Zhang , Ruiyi Zhang , Lawrence Carin , Changyou Chen

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is a workhorse in machine learning, yet its slow convergence can be a computational bottleneck. Variance reduction techniques such as SAG, SVRG and SAGA have been proposed to overcome this weakness,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-02-29 Thomas Hofmann , Aurelien Lucchi , Simon Lacoste-Julien , Brian McWilliams

The stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm has been widely used in statistical estimation for large-scale data due to its computational and memory efficiency. While most existing works focus on the convergence of the objective function…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-11-02 Xi Chen , Jason D. Lee , Xin T. Tong , Yichen Zhang

We provide finite-particle convergence rates for the Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) algorithm in the Kernelized Stein Discrepancy ($\mathsf{KSD}$) and Wasserstein-2 metrics. Our key insight is that the time derivative of the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-06-10 Sayan Banerjee , Krishnakumar Balasubramanian , Promit Ghosal

Sign stochastic gradient descent (signSGD) is a communication-efficient method that transmits only the sign of stochastic gradients for parameter updating. Existing literature has demonstrated that signSGD can achieve a convergence rate of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-16 Wei Jiang , Sifan Yang , Wenhao Yang , Lijun Zhang

Classical stochastic gradient methods for optimization rely on noisy gradient approximations that become progressively less accurate as iterates approach a solution. The large noise and small signal in the resulting gradients makes it…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-04-10 Soham De , Abhay Yadav , David Jacobs , Tom Goldstein

Asynchronous stochastic gradient descent (ASGD) is a standard way to exploit heterogeneous compute resources in distributed learning: instead of forcing fast workers to wait for slow ones, the server updates the model whenever a gradient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Ammar Mahran , Artavazd Maranjyan , Peter Richtárik