Related papers: A stochastic gradient descent algorithm with rando…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a foundational algorithm for large-scale statistical learning and stochastic optimization. However, statistical inference based on SGD iterates remains challenging when stochastic gradients have infinite…
We present a convergence rate analysis for biased stochastic gradient descent (SGD), where individual gradient updates are corrupted by computation errors. We develop stochastic quadratic constraints to formulate a small linear matrix…
Stochastic discriminative EM (sdEM) is an online-EM-type algorithm for discriminative training of probabilistic generative models belonging to the exponential family. In this work, we introduce and justify this algorithm as a stochastic…
Uniform sampling of training data has been commonly used in traditional stochastic optimization algorithms such as Proximal Stochastic Gradient Descent (prox-SGD) and Proximal Stochastic Dual Coordinate Ascent (prox-SDCA). Although uniform…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a standard optimization method to minimize a training error with respect to network parameters in modern neural network learning. However, it typically suffers from proliferation of saddle points in the…
Gradient normalization and soft clipping are two popular techniques for tackling instability issues and improving convergence of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with momentum. In this article, we study these types of methods through the…
We study a distributed consensus-based stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm and show that the rate of convergence involves the spectral properties of two matrices: the standard spectral gap of a weight matrix from the network…
In this paper, we propose a unified view of gradient-based algorithms for stochastic convex composite optimization by extending the concept of estimate sequence introduced by Nesterov. This point of view covers the stochastic gradient…
Stochastic gradient descent is the method of choice for large scale optimization of machine learning objective functions. Yet, its performance is greatly variable and heavily depends on the choice of the stepsizes. This has motivated a…
We study diffusion and consensus based optimization of a sum of unknown convex objective functions over distributed networks. The only access to these functions is through stochastic gradient oracles, each of which is only available at a…
This paper studies distributed nonconvex optimization problems with stochastic gradients for a multi-agent system, in which each agent aims to minimize the sum of all agents' cost functions by using local compressed information exchange. We…
For finite-dimensional problems, stochastic approximation methods have long been used to solve stochastic optimization problems. Their application to infinite-dimensional problems is less understood, particularly for nonconvex objectives.…
Coordinate descent with random coordinate selection is the current state of the art for many large scale optimization problems. However, greedy selection of the steepest coordinate on smooth problems can yield convergence rates independent…
Many iterative procedures in stochastic optimization exhibit a transient phase followed by a stationary phase. During the transient phase the procedure converges towards a region of interest, and during the stationary phase the procedure…
We propose new continuous-time formulations for first-order stochastic optimization algorithms such as mini-batch gradient descent and variance-reduced methods. We exploit these continuous-time models, together with simple Lyapunov analysis…
The goal of this paper is to debunk and dispel the magic behind black-box optimizers and stochastic optimizers. It aims to build a solid foundation on how and why the techniques work. This manuscript crystallizes this knowledge by deriving…
In this work, we propose an optimization algorithm which we call norm-adapted gradient descent. This algorithm is similar to other gradient-based optimization algorithms like Adam or Adagrad in that it adapts the learning rate of stochastic…
We consider the problem of optimising the expected value of a loss functional over a nonlinear model class of functions, assuming that we have only access to realisations of the gradient of the loss. This is a classical task in statistics,…
Any gradient descent optimization requires to choose a learning rate. With deeper and deeper models, tuning that learning rate can easily become tedious and does not necessarily lead to an ideal convergence. We propose a variation of the…
We provide tight finite-time convergence bounds for gradient descent and stochastic gradient descent on quadratic functions, when the gradients are delayed and reflect iterates from $\tau$ rounds ago. First, we show that without stochastic…