Related papers: SASSHA: Sharpness-aware Adaptive Second-order Opti…

Neural networks have achieved remarkable success in many cognitive tasks. However, when they are trained sequentially on multiple tasks without access to old data, their performance on early tasks tend to drop significantly. This problem is…

Generalization remains a critical challenge in speech deepfake detection (SDD). While various approaches aim to improve robustness, generalization is typically assessed through performance metrics like equal error rate without a theoretical…

We study the optimization of non-convex functions that are not necessarily smooth (gradient and/or Hessian are Lipschitz) using first order methods. Smoothness is a restrictive assumption in machine learning in both theory and practice,…

Gradient dominance property is a condition weaker than strong convexity, yet sufficiently ensures global convergence even in non-convex optimization. This property finds wide applications in machine learning, reinforcement learning (RL),…

Sharpness-aware Minimization (SAM) has been proposed recently to improve model generalization ability. However, SAM calculates the gradient twice in each optimization step, thereby doubling the computation costs compared to stochastic…

This paper studies the complexity of finding an $\epsilon$-stationary point for stochastic bilevel optimization when the upper-level problem is nonconvex and the lower-level problem is strongly convex. Recent work proposed the first-order…

Many machine learning models involve solving optimization problems. Thus, it is important to deal with a large-scale optimization problem in big data applications. Recently, subsampled Newton methods have emerged to attract much attention…

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…

Recently a majorization method for optimizing partition functions of log-linear models was proposed alongside a novel quadratic variational upper-bound. In the batch setting, it outperformed state-of-the-art first- and second-order…

We develop regularization methods to find flat minima while training deep neural networks. These minima generalize better than sharp minima, yielding models outperforming baselines on real-world test data (which may be distributed…

We propose a novel stochastic smoothing accelerated gradient (SSAG) method for general constrained nonsmooth convex composite optimization, and analyze the convergence rates. The SSAG method allows various smoothing techniques, and can deal…

Deep neural networks often suffer from poor generalization caused by complex and non-convex loss landscapes. One of the popular solutions is Sharpness-Aware Minimization (SAM), which smooths the loss landscape via minimizing the maximized…

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) stands as a cornerstone optimization algorithm with proven real-world empirical successes but relatively limited theoretical understanding. Recent research has illuminated a key factor contributing to its…

In this paper, we generalize (accelerated) Newton's method with cubic regularization under inexact second-order information for (strongly) convex optimization problems. Under mild assumptions, we provide global rate of convergence of these…

The graduated optimization approach, also known as the continuation method, is a popular heuristic to solving non-convex problems that has received renewed interest over the last decade. Despite its popularity, very little is known in terms…

First-order stochastic methods are the state-of-the-art in large-scale machine learning optimization owing to efficient per-iteration complexity. Second-order methods, while able to provide faster convergence, have been much less explored…

Applications such as unbalanced and fully shuffled regression can be approached by optimizing regularized optimal transport (OT) distances, such as the entropic OT and Sinkhorn distances. A common approach for this optimization is to use a…

When the available information is noisy zeroth-order (ZO) oracle, stochastic approximation methods are popular for estimating the root of the multivariate gradient equation. Inspired by the Stein's identity, this work establishes a novel…

In this paper we present a novel quasi-Newton algorithm for use in stochastic optimisation. Quasi-Newton methods have had an enormous impact on deterministic optimisation problems because they afford rapid convergence and computationally…

The homogeneous second-order descent method (Zhang et al. 2025, Mathematics of Operations Research) was initially proposed for unconstrained optimisation problems. HSODM shows excellent performance with respect to the global complexity rate…