Related papers: On a probabilistic global optimizer derived from t…
We present an optimization algorithm that can identify a global minimum of a potentially nonconvex smooth function with high probability, assuming the Gibbs measure of the potential satisfies a logarithmic Sobolev inequality. Our…
A gradient-free deterministic method is developed to solve global optimization problems for Lipschitz continuous functions defined in arbitrary path-wise connected compact sets in Euclidean spaces. The method can be regarded as granular…
The paper considers a distributed algorithm for global minimization of a nonconvex function. The algorithm is a first-order consensus + innovations type algorithm that incorporates decaying additive Gaussian noise for annealing, converging…
This paper studies first-order algorithms for solving fully composite optimization problems over convex and compact sets. We leverage the structure of the objective by handling its differentiable and non-differentiable components…
In this paper, we propose objective-function-free (OFF) variants of the proximal Newton method for nonconvex composite optimization problems and the regularized Newton method for unconstrained optimization problems, respectively, using…
In the field of global optimization, many existing algorithms face challenges posed by non-convex target functions and high computational complexity or unavailability of gradient information. These limitations, exacerbated by sensitivity to…
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…
We present a random-subspace variant of cubic regularization algorithm that chooses the size of the subspace adaptively, based on the rank of the projected second derivative matrix. Iteratively, our variant only requires access to…
We consider convex optimization with non-smooth objective function and log-concave sampling with non-smooth potential (negative log density). In particular, we study two specific settings where the convex objective/potential function is…
This work explores a novel perspective on solving nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization problems by leveraging sampling based methods. Instead of treating the objective function purely through traditional (often deterministic) optimization…
In this paper we introduce a new sampling algorithm which has the potential to be adopted as a universal replacement to the Metropolis--Hastings algorithm. It is related to the slice sampler, and motivated by an algorithm which is…
We study the problem of zero-order optimization of a strongly convex function. The goal is to find the minimizer of the function by a sequential exploration of its values, under measurement noise. We study the impact of higher order…
We consider minimizing a function consisting of a quadratic term and a proximable term which is possibly nonconvex and nonsmooth. This problem is also known as scaled proximal operator. Despite its simple form, existing methods suffer from…
We develop and analyze a set of new sequential simulation-optimization algorithms for large-scale multi-dimensional discrete optimization via simulation problems with a convexity structure. The "large-scale" notion refers to that the…
We propose a new globalization strategy that can be used in unconstrained optimization algorithms to support rapid convergence from remote starting points. Our approach is based on using multiple points at each iteration to build a…
Obtaining solutions to Optimal Transportation (OT) problems is typically intractable when the marginal spaces are continuous. Recent research has focused on approximating continuous solutions with discretization methods based on i.i.d.…
This paper proposes a novel technique called "successive stochastic smoothing" that optimizes nonsmooth and discontinuous functions while considering various constraints. Our methodology enables local and global optimization, making it a…
We consider the minimization of non-convex functions that typically arise in machine learning. Specifically, we focus our attention on a variant of trust region methods known as cubic regularization. This approach is particularly attractive…
Sparse inverse covariance selection is a fundamental problem for analyzing dependencies in high dimensional data. However, such a problem is difficult to solve since it is NP-hard. Existing solutions are primarily based on convex…
We propose an algorithmic framework, that employs active subspace techniques, for scalable global optimization of functions with low effective dimension (also referred to as low-rank functions). This proposal replaces the original…