Related papers: Fixed Point Computation: Beating Brute Force with …

Optimization problems with access to only zeroth-order information of the objective function on Riemannian manifolds arise in various applications, spanning from statistical learning to robot learning. While various zeroth-order algorithms…

In this work, we develop new optimization algorithms that use approximate second-order information combined with the gradient regularization technique to achieve fast global convergence rates for both convex and non-convex objectives. The…

We present new algorithms for optimizing non-smooth, non-convex stochastic objectives based on a novel analysis technique. This improves the current best-known complexity for finding a $(\delta,\epsilon)$-stationary point from…

This work considers the problem of finding a first-order stationary point of a non-convex function with potentially unbounded smoothness constant using a stochastic gradient oracle. We focus on the class of $(L_0,L_1)$-smooth functions…

We propose perturbed proximal algorithms that can provably escape strict saddles for nonsmooth weakly convex functions. The main results are based on a novel characterization of $\epsilon$-approximate local minimum for nonsmooth functions,…

We present algorithms for the $(1+\epsilon)$-approximate version of the closest vector problem for certain norms. The currently fastest algorithm (Dadush and Kun 2016) for general norms has running time of $2^{O(n)} (1/\epsilon)^n$. We…

Consider an oracle which takes a point $x$ and returns the minimizer of a convex function $f$ in an $\ell_2$ ball of radius $r$ around $x$. It is straightforward to show that roughly $r^{-1}\log\frac{1}{\epsilon}$ calls to the oracle…

Smooth finite-sum optimization has been widely studied in both convex and nonconvex settings. However, existing lower bounds for finite-sum optimization are mostly limited to the setting where each component function is (strongly) convex,…

We design algorithms for minimizing $\max_{i\in[n]} f_i(x)$ over a $d$-dimensional Euclidean or simplex domain. When each $f_i$ is $1$-Lipschitz and $1$-smooth, our method computes an $\epsilon$-approximate solution using $\widetilde{O}(n…

We give the first agnostic, efficient, proper learning algorithm for monotone Boolean functions. Given $2^{\tilde{O}(\sqrt{n}/\varepsilon)}$ uniformly random examples of an unknown function $f:\{\pm 1\}^n \rightarrow \{\pm 1\}$, our…

We study the query complexity of finding a Tarski fixed point over the $k$-dimensional grid $\{1,\ldots,n\}^k$. Improving on the previous best upper bound of $\smash{O(\log^{\lceil 2k/3\rceil} n)}$ [FPS20], we give a new algorithm with…

Practical implementations of Gaussian smoothing algorithms have received a great deal of attention in the last 60 years. However, almost all work focuses on estimating complete time series (''fixed-interval smoothing'', $\mathcal{O}(K)$…

We study minimization of a structured objective function, being the sum of a smooth function and a composition of a weakly convex function with a linear operator. Applications include image reconstruction problems with regularizers that…

We develop new $(1+\epsilon)$-approximation algorithms for finding the global minimum edge-cut in a directed edge-weighted graph, and for finding the global minimum vertex-cut in a directed vertex-weighted graph. Our algorithms are…

A \emph{saddlepoint} of an $n \times n$ matrix is an entry that is the maximum of its row and the minimum of its column. Saddlepoints give the \emph{value} of a two-player zero-sum game, corresponding to its pure-strategy Nash equilibria;…

In this paper, we study the tradeoff between the approximation guarantee and adaptivity for the problem of maximizing a monotone submodular function subject to a cardinality constraint. The adaptivity of an algorithm is the number of…

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…

Recently, a framework for the approximation of the entire set of $\epsilon$-efficient solutions (denote by $E_\epsilon$) of a multi-objective optimization problem with stochastic search algorithms has been proposed. It was proven that such…

This paper investigates a class of stochastic bilevel optimization problems where the upper-level function is nonconvex with potentially unbounded smoothness and the lower-level problem is strongly convex. These problems have significant…

Fixed-point equations with Lipschitz operators have been studied for more than a century, and are central to problems in mathematical optimization, game theory, economics, and dynamical systems, among others. When the Lipschitz constant of…