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A central challenge to using first-order methods for optimizing nonconvex problems is the presence of saddle points. First-order methods often get stuck at saddle points, greatly deteriorating their performance. Typically, to escape from…
The paper considers the problem of network-based computation of global minima in smooth nonconvex optimization problems. It is known that distributed gradient-descent-type algorithms can achieve convergence to the set of global minima by…
In nonsmooth optimization, a negative subgradient is not necessarily a descent direction, making the design of convergent descent methods based on zeroth-order and first-order information a challenging task. The well-studied bundle methods…
We propose new sequential simulation-optimization algorithms for general convex optimization via simulation problems with high-dimensional discrete decision space. The performance of each choice of discrete decision variables is evaluated…
This paper studies the stochastic nonconvex-strongly-concave minimax optimization over a multi-agent network. We propose an efficient algorithm, called Decentralized Recursive gradient descEnt Ascent Method (DREAM), which achieves the…
The Primal-Dual (PD) algorithm is widely used in convex optimization to determine saddle points. While the stability of the PD algorithm can be easily guaranteed, strict contraction is nontrivial to establish in most cases. This work…
We consider chance-constrained problems with discrete random distribution. We aim for problems with a large number of scenarios. We propose a novel method based on the stochastic gradient descent method which performs updates of the…
The natural gradient method is widely used in statistical optimization, but its standard formulation assumes a Euclidean parameter space. This paper proposes an inversion-free stochastic natural gradient method for probability distributions…
Policy gradients methods apply to complex, poorly understood, control problems by performing stochastic gradient descent over a parameterized class of polices. Unfortunately, even for simple control problems solvable by standard dynamic…
Min-max optimization problems involving nonconvex-nonconcave objectives have found important applications in adversarial training and other multi-agent learning settings. Yet, no known gradient descent-based method is guaranteed to converge…
We focus on a class of non-smooth optimization problems over the Stiefel manifold in the decentralized setting, where a connected network of $n$ agents cooperatively minimize a finite-sum objective function with each component being weakly…
Stochastic gradient descent in continuous time (SGDCT) provides a computationally efficient method for the statistical learning of continuous-time models, which are widely used in science, engineering, and finance. The SGDCT algorithm…
Under mild assumptions stochastic gradient methods asymptotically achieve an optimal rate of convergence if the arithmetic mean of all iterates is returned as an approximate optimal solution. However, in the absence of stochastic noise, the…
We consider the problem of minimizing a non-convex function over a smooth manifold $\mathcal{M}$. We propose a novel algorithm, the Orthogonal Directions Constrained Gradient Method (ODCGM) which only requires computing a projection onto a…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method is popular for solving non-convex optimization problems in machine learning. This work investigates SGD from a viewpoint of graduated optimization, which is a widely applied approach for non-convex…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a prevalent optimization technique for large-scale distributed machine learning. While SGD computation can be efficiently divided between multiple machines, communication typically becomes a bottleneck…
In this article we establish new central limit theorems for Ruppert-Polyak averaged stochastic gradient descent schemes. Compared to previous work we do not assume that convergence occurs to an isolated attractor but instead allow…
In this paper, online convex optimization is applied to the problem of controlling linear dynamical systems. An algorithm similar to online gradient descent, which can handle time-varying and unknown cost functions, is proposed. Then,…
This paper considers continuously differentiable functions of two vector variables that have (possibly a continuum of) min-max saddle points. We study the asymptotic convergence properties of the associated saddle-point dynamics…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD), which dates back to the 1950s, is one of the most popular and effective approaches for performing stochastic optimization. Research on SGD resurged recently in machine learning for optimizing convex loss…