Related papers: Towards Weaker Variance Assumptions for Stochastic…
This paper deals with the scenario approach to robust optimization. This relies on a random sampling of the possibly infinite number of constraints induced by uncertainties in the parameters of an optimization problem. Solving the resulting…
We consider the problem of minimizing the sum of two convex functions: one is the average of a large number of smooth component functions, and the other is a general convex function that admits a simple proximal mapping. We assume the whole…
We consider stochastic optimization problems involving an expected value of a nonlinear function of a base random vector and a conditional expectation of another function depending on the base random vector, a dependent random vector, and…
We propose novel optimal and parameter-free algorithms for computing an approximate solution with small (projected) gradient norm. Specifically, for computing an approximate solution such that the norm of its (projected) gradient does not…
In this paper, a new theory is developed for first-order stochastic convex optimization, showing that the global convergence rate is sufficiently quantified by a local growth rate of the objective function in a neighborhood of the optimal…
In this paper, we present a stochastic gradient algorithm for minimizing a smooth objective function that is an expectation over noisy cost samples, and only the latter are observed for any given parameter. Our algorithm employs a gradient…
We consider stochastic gradient descent algorithms for minimizing a non-smooth, strongly-convex function. Several forms of this algorithm, including suffix averaging, are known to achieve the optimal $O(1/T)$ convergence rate in…
We consider a distributed multi-agent network system where the goal is to minimize a sum of convex objective functions of the agents subject to a common convex constraint set. Each agent maintains an iterate sequence and communicates the…
We consider constrained optimization problems with a nonsmooth objective function in the form of mathematical expectation. The Sample Average Approximation (SAA) is used to estimate the objective function and variable sample size strategy…
We design and analyze an algorithm for first-order stochastic optimization of a large class of functions on $\mathbb{R}^d$. In particular, we consider the \emph{variationally coherent} functions which can be convex or non-convex. The…
Stochastic gradient descent type methods are ubiquitous in machine learning, but they are only applicable to the optimization of differentiable functions. Proximal algorithms are more general and applicable to nonsmooth functions. We…
The subgradient method is one of the most fundamental algorithmic schemes for nonsmooth optimization. The existing complexity and convergence results for this method are mainly derived for Lipschitz continuous objective functions. In this…
We present two stochastic descent algorithms that apply to unconstrained optimization and are particularly efficient when the objective function is slow to evaluate and gradients are not easily obtained, as in some PDE-constrained…
Stochastic gradient algorithms are more and more studied since they can deal efficiently and online with large samples in high dimensional spaces. In this paper, we first establish a Central Limit Theorem for these estimates as well as for…
In this work, we present a globalized stochastic semismooth Newton method for solving stochastic optimization problems involving smooth nonconvex and nonsmooth convex terms in the objective function. We assume that only noisy gradient and…
This work examines the convergence of stochastic gradient-based optimization algorithms that use early stopping based on a validation function. The form of early stopping we consider is that optimization terminates when the norm of the…
Stochastic nonconvex optimization problems with nonlinear constraints have a broad range of applications in intelligent transportation, cyber-security, and smart grids. In this paper, first, we propose an inexact-proximal accelerated…
An algorithm is said to be adaptive to a certain parameter (of the problem) if it does not need a priori knowledge of such a parameter but performs competitively to those that know it. This dissertation presents our work on adaptive…
This paper considers time-average stochastic optimization, where a time average decision vector, an average of decision vectors chosen in every time step from a time-varying (possibly non-convex) set, minimizes a convex objective function…
Classical analysis of convex and non-convex optimization methods often requires the Lipshitzness of the gradient, which limits the analysis to functions bounded by quadratics. Recent work relaxed this requirement to a non-uniform smoothness…