Related papers: Nonconvex Stochastic Optimization under Heavy-Tail…
Recently, several studies consider the stochastic optimization problem but in a heavy-tailed noise regime, i.e., the difference between the stochastic gradient and the true gradient is assumed to have a finite $p$-th moment (say being upper…
Heavy-tailed noise in nonconvex stochastic optimization has garnered increasing research interest, as empirical studies, including those on training attention models, suggest it is a more realistic gradient noise condition. This paper…
Optimization under heavy-tailed noise has become popular recently, since it better fits many modern machine learning tasks, as captured by empirical observations. Concretely, instead of a finite second moment on gradient noise, a bounded…
Recent empirical evidence indicates that many machine learning applications involve heavy-tailed gradient noise, which challenges the standard assumptions of bounded variance in stochastic optimization. Gradient clipping has emerged as a…
In this paper, we provide novel optimal (or near optimal) convergence rates for a clipped version of the stochastic subgradient method. We consider nonsmooth convex problems over possibly unbounded domains, under heavy-tailed noise that…
In this paper, we propose a new accelerated stochastic first-order method called clipped-SSTM for smooth convex stochastic optimization with heavy-tailed distributed noise in stochastic gradients and derive the first high-probability…
Gradient clipping has long been considered essential for ensuring the convergence of Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) in the presence of heavy-tailed gradient noise. In this paper, we revisit this belief and explore whether gradient…
In existing distributed stochastic optimization studies, it is usually assumed that the gradient noise has a bounded variance. However, recent research shows that the heavy-tailed noise, which allows an unbounded variance, is closer to…
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.…
While the convergence behaviors of stochastic gradient methods are well understood \emph{in expectation}, there still exist many gaps in the understanding of their convergence with \emph{high probability}, where the convergence rate has a…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is a cornerstone of large-scale optimization, yet its theoretical behavior under heavy-tailed noise -- common in modern machine learning and reinforcement learning -- remains poorly understood. In this…
Gradient clipping is a widely used technique in Machine Learning and Deep Learning (DL), known for its effectiveness in mitigating the impact of heavy-tailed noise, which frequently arises in the training of large language models.…
Recent studies have provided both empirical and theoretical evidence illustrating that heavy tails can emerge in stochastic gradient descent (SGD) in various scenarios. Such heavy tails potentially result in iterates with diverging…
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…
High-probability analysis of stochastic first-order optimization methods under mild assumptions on the noise has been gaining a lot of attention in recent years. Typically, gradient clipping is one of the key algorithmic ingredients to…
We consider stochastic optimization problems with heavy-tailed noise with structured density. For such problems, we show that it is possible to get faster rates of convergence than $\mathcal{O}(K^{-2(\alpha - 1)/\alpha})$, when 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…
Stochastic first-order methods are standard for training large-scale machine learning models. Random behavior may cause a particular run of an algorithm to result in a highly suboptimal objective value, whereas theoretical guarantees are…
Many tasks in modern machine learning are observed to involve heavy-tailed gradient noise during the optimization process. To manage this realistic and challenging setting, new mechanisms, such as gradient clipping and gradient…
Heavy-tailed noise has attracted growing attention in nonconvex stochastic optimization, as numerous empirical studies suggest it offers a more realistic assumption than standard bounded variance assumption. In this work, we investigate…