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In this paper, we consider a finite-dimensional optimization problem minimizing a continuous objective on a compact domain subject to a multi-dimensional constraint function. For the latter, we assume the availability of a global Lipschitz…
This paper considers the problem for finding the $(\delta,\epsilon)$-Goldstein stationary point of Lipschitz continuous objective, which is a rich function class to cover a great number of important applications. We construct a zeroth-order…
The paper investigates two inertial extragradient algorithms for seeking a common solution to a variational inequality problem involving a monotone and Lipschitz continuous mapping and a fixed point problem with a demicontractive mapping in…
We establish or refute the optimality of inexact second-order methods for unconstrained nonconvex optimization from the point of view of worst-case evaluation complexity, improving and generalizing the results of Cartis, Gould and Toint…
We define "decision swap regret" which generalizes both prediction for downstream swap regret and omniprediction, and give algorithms for obtaining it for arbitrary multi-dimensional Lipschitz loss functions in online adversarial settings.…
Bayesian optimization is a powerful tool to optimize a black-box function, the evaluation of which is time-consuming or costly. In this paper, we propose a new approach to Bayesian optimization called GP-MGC, which maximizes multiscale…
Optimization of convex functions under stochastic zeroth-order feedback has been a major and challenging question in online learning. In this work, we consider the problem of optimizing second-order smooth and strongly convex functions…
This paper presents a stochastic block-coordinate proximal Newton method for minimizing the sum of a blockwise Lipschitz-continuously differentiable function and a separable nonsmooth convex function. At each iteration, the method randomly…
Generalising the idea of the classical EM algorithm that is widely used for computing maximum likelihood estimates, we propose an EM-Control (EM-C) algorithm for solving multi-period finite time horizon stochastic control problems. The new…
In this paper we propose a variant of a consensus-based global optimization (CBO) method that uses personal best information in order to compute the global minimum of a non-convex, locally Lipschitz continuous function. The proposed…
A framework based on iterative coordinate minimization (CM) is developed for stochastic convex optimization. Given that exact coordinate minimization is impossible due to the unknown stochastic nature of the objective function, the crux of…
We introduce BLOC (Black-box Optimization over Correlation matrices), a general framework for sparse covariance estimation with non-convex penalties. BLOC operates on the manifold of correlation matrices and reparameterizes it via an…
The Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolutionary Strategy (CMA-ES) is one of the most advanced algorithms in numerical black-box optimization. For noisy objective functions, several approaches were proposed to mitigate the noise, e.g.,…
Most successful stochastic black-box optimizers, such as CMA-ES, use rankings of the individual samples to obtain a new search distribution. Yet, the use of rankings also introduces several issues such as the underlying optimization…
While globally optimal solutions to many convex programs can be computed efficiently in polynomial time, this is, in general, not possible for nonconvex optimization problems. Therefore, locally optimal approaches or other efficient…
Consensus-based optimization (CBO) is a multi-agent metaheuristic derivative-free optimization algorithm that has proven to be capable of globally minimizing nonconvex nonsmooth functions across a diverse range of applications while being…
Black-box zero-th order optimization is a central primitive for applications in fields as diverse as finance, physics, and engineering. In a common formulation of this problem, a designer sequentially attempts candidate solutions, receiving…
Graph algorithms are widely used for decision making and knowledge discovery. To ensure their effectiveness, it is essential that their output remains stable even when subjected to small perturbations to the input because frequent output…
The optimization of expensive-to-evaluate black-box functions over combinatorial structures is an ubiquitous task in machine learning, engineering and the natural sciences. The combinatorial explosion of the search space and costly…
Bayesian Optimization (BO) is widely used for optimising black-box functions but requires us to specify the length scale hyperparameter, which defines the smoothness of the functions the optimizer will consider. Most current BO algorithms…