Related papers: SPGD: Steepest Perturbed Gradient Descent Optimiza…
We study the Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) method in nonconvex optimization problems from the point of view of approximating diffusion processes. We prove rigorously that the diffusion process can approximate the SGD algorithm weakly…
Stochastically controlled stochastic gradient (SCSG) methods have been proved to converge efficiently to first-order stationary points which, however, can be saddle points in nonconvex optimization. It has been observed that a stochastic…
Differential privacy (DP) has become a prevalent privacy model in a wide range of machine learning tasks, especially after the debut of DP-SGD. However, DP-SGD, which directly perturbs gradients in the training iterations, fails to mitigate…
SketchySGD improves upon existing stochastic gradient methods in machine learning by using randomized low-rank approximations to the subsampled Hessian and by introducing an automated stepsize that works well across a wide range of convex…
We study stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for composite optimization problems with $N$ sequential operators subject to perturbations in both the forward and backward passes. Unlike classical analyses that treat gradient noise as additive…
Classical assumptions like strong convexity and Lipschitz smoothness often fail to capture the nature of deep learning optimization problems, which are typically non-convex and non-smooth, making traditional analyses less applicable. This…
We study the foundations of variational inference, which frames posterior inference as an optimisation problem, for probabilistic programming. The dominant approach for optimisation in practice is stochastic gradient descent. In particular,…
Stochastic-gradient-based optimization has been a core enabling methodology in applications to large-scale problems in machine learning and related areas. Despite the progress, the gap between theory and practice remains significant, with…
In machine learning, stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is widely deployed to train models using highly non-convex objectives with equally complex noise models. Unfortunately, SGD theory often makes restrictive assumptions that fail to…
The multi-gradient descent algorithm (MGDA) finds a common descent direction that can improve all objectives by identifying the minimum-norm point in the convex hull of the objective gradients. This method has become a foundational tool in…
Momentum Stochastic Gradient Descent (MSGD) algorithm has been widely applied to many nonconvex optimization problems in machine learning, e.g., training deep neural networks, variational Bayesian inference, and etc. Despite its empirical…
In this paper, we study the performance of a large family of SGD variants in the smooth nonconvex regime. To this end, we propose a generic and flexible assumption capable of accurate modeling of the second moment of the stochastic…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is the workhorse algorithm of deep learning technology. At each step of the training phase, a mini batch of samples is drawn from the training dataset and the weights of the neural network are adjusted…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) has become popular for solving large scale supervised machine learning optimization problems such as SVM, due to their strong theoretical guarantees. While the closely related Dual Coordinate Ascent (DCA)…
We present a comprehensive theoretical analysis of first-order methods for escaping strict saddle points in smooth non-convex optimization. Our main contribution is a Perturbed Saddle-escape Descent (PSD) algorithm with fully explicit…
In this paper, we investigate a general class of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithms, called Conditioned SGD, based on a preconditioning of the gradient direction. Using a discrete-time approach with martingale tools, we establish…
Stochastic gradient descent with momentum (SGDM) methods have become fundamental optimization tools in machine learning, combining the computational efficiency of stochastic gradients with the acceleration benefits of momentum. Despite…
Gradient compression is of growing interests for solving constrained optimization problems including compressed sensing, noisy recovery and matrix completion under limited communication resources and storage costs. Convergence analysis of…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) and its variants underpin modern machine learning by enabling efficient optimization of large-scale models. However, their local search nature limits exploration in complex landscapes. In this paper, we…
Conventional learning methods simplify the bilinear model by regarding two intrinsically coupled factors independently, which degrades the optimization procedure. One reason lies in the insufficient training due to the asynchronous gradient…