Related papers: $O(1/k)$ Finite-Time Bound for Non-Linear Two-Time…

This paper derives non-asymptotic error bounds for nonlinear stochastic approximation algorithms in the Wasserstein-$p$ distance. To obtain explicit finite-sample guarantees for the last iterate, we develop a coupling argument that compares…

A sequential quadratic programming method is designed for solving general smooth nonlinear stochastic optimization problems subject to expectation equality constraints. We consider the setting where the objective and constraint function…

We consider an on-line least squares regression problem with optimal solution $\theta^*$ and Hessian matrix H, and study a time-average stochastic gradient descent estimator of $\theta^*$. For $k\ge2$, we provide an unbiased estimator of…

k-means is a widely used clustering algorithm, but for $k$ clusters and a dataset size of $N$, each iteration of Lloyd's algorithm costs $O(kN)$ time. Although there are existing techniques to accelerate single Lloyd iterations, none of…

A class of generalized conditional gradient algorithms for the solution of optimization problem in spaces of Radon measures is presented. The method iteratively inserts additional Dirac-delta functions and optimizes the corresponding…

In this paper, we study the bias and high-order error bounds of the Linear Stochastic Approximation (LSA) algorithm with Polyak-Ruppert (PR) averaging under Markovian noise. We focus on the version of the algorithm with constant step size…

The metric $k$-median problem is a textbook clustering problem. As input, we are given a metric space $V$ of size $n$ and an integer $k$, and our task is to find a subset $S \subseteq V$ of at most $k$ `centers' that minimizes the total…

This paper studies the Nesterov-Spokoiny Acceleration (NSA), a variant of the accelerated gradient method by Nesterov and Spokoiny. For smooth convex optimization, NSA achieves a strict $o(1/k^2)$ convergence rate in function value and an…

Two time scale stochastic approximation is analyzed when the iterates on either or both time scales do not necessarily converge.

Algorithms for solving \textit{nonlinear} fixed-point equations -- such as average-reward \textit{$Q$-learning} and \textit{TD-learning} -- often involve semi-norm contractions. Achieving parameter-free optimal convergence rates for these…

We are interested in understanding stability (almost sure boundedness) of stochastic approximation algorithms (SAs) driven by a `controlled Markov' process. Analyzing this class of algorithms is important, since many reinforcement learning…

We propose a stochastic approximation method for approximating the efficient frontier of chance-constrained nonlinear programs. Our approach is based on a bi-objective viewpoint of chance-constrained programs that seeks solutions on the…

Asynchronous stochastic approximations (SAs) are an important class of model-free algorithms, tools and techniques that are popular in multi-agent and distributed control scenarios. To counter Bellman's curse of dimensionality, such…

When measuring the value of a function to be minimized is not only expensive but also with noise, the popular simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation (SPSA) algorithm requires only two function values in each iteration. In this…

In this paper, we revisit the convergence of the Heavy-ball method, and present improved convergence complexity results in the convex setting. We provide the first non-ergodic O(1/k) rate result of the Heavy-ball algorithm with constant…

We propose a first-order method for stochastic strongly convex optimization that attains $O(1/n)$ rate of convergence, analysis show that the proposed method is simple, easily to implement, and in worst case, asymptotically four times…

The edit distance of two strings is the minimum number of insertions, deletions, and substitutions of characters needed to transform one string into the other. The textbook dynamic-programming algorithm computes the edit distance of two…

In this paper, we study the almost sure boundedness and the convergence of the stochastic approximation (SA) algorithm. At present, most available convergence proofs are based on the ODE method, and the almost sure boundedness of the…

We investigate the Randomized Stochastic Accelerated Gradient (RSAG) method, utilizing either constant or adaptive step sizes, for stochastic optimization problems with generalized smooth objective functions. Under relaxed affine variance…

We consider stochastic variational inequality problems where the mapping is monotone over a compact convex set. We present two robust variants of stochastic extragradient algorithms for solving such problems. Of these, the first scheme…