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We study the problem of zero-order optimization of a strongly convex function. The goal is to find the minimizer of the function by a sequential exploration of its values, under measurement noise. We study the impact of higher order…
Motivated by variational models in continuum mechanics, we introduce a novel algorithm to perform nonsmooth and nonconvex minimizations with linear constraints in Euclidean spaces. We show how this algorithm is actually a natural…
Subgradient methods comprise a fundamental class of nonsmooth optimization algorithms. Classical results show that certain subgradient methods converge sublinearly for general Lipschitz convex functions and converge linearly for convex…
We consider a class of nonsmooth optimization problems over the Stiefel manifold, in which the objective function is weakly convex in the ambient Euclidean space. Such problems are ubiquitous in engineering applications but still largely…
We report a practical finite-time algorithmic scheme to compute approximately stationary points for nonconvex nonsmooth Lipschitz functions. In particular, we are interested in two kinds of approximate stationarity notions for nonconvex…
Stochastic optimization problems with unknown decision-dependent distributions have attracted increasing attention in recent years due to its importance in applications. Since the gradient of the objective function is inaccessible as a…
This chapter is devoted to the black-box subgradient algorithms with the minimal requirements for the storage of auxiliary results, which are necessary to execute these algorithms. It starts with the original result of N.Z. Shor which open…
We consider a family of algorithms that successively sample and minimize simple stochastic models of the objective function. We show that under reasonable conditions on approximation quality and regularity of the models, any such algorithm…
This paper reviews the gradient sampling methodology for solving nonsmooth, nonconvex optimization problems. An intuitively straightforward gradient sampling algorithm is stated and its convergence properties are summarized. Throughout this…
The analysis of gradient descent-type methods typically relies on the Lipschitz continuity of the objective gradient. This generally requires an expensive hyperparameter tuning process to appropriately calibrate a stepsize for a given…
Optimization models with non-convex constraints arise in many tasks in machine learning, e.g., learning with fairness constraints or Neyman-Pearson classification with non-convex loss. Although many efficient methods have been developed…
In this paper, we propose an inexact block coordinate descent algorithm for large-scale nonsmooth nonconvex optimization problems. At each iteration, a particular block variable is selected and updated by inexactly solving the original…
The paper proposes and develops new globally convergent algorithms of the generalized damped Newton type for solving important classes of nonsmooth optimization problems. These algorithms are based on the theory and calculations of…
Majorization-minimization schemes are a broad class of iterative methods targeting general optimization problems, including nonconvex, nonsmooth and stochastic. These algorithms minimize successively a sequence of upper bounds of the…
This article introduces a novel family of optimization algorithms - Anisotropic Gaussian Smoothing Gradient Descent (AGS-GD), AGS-Stochastic Gradient Descent (AGS-SGD), and AGS-Adam - that employ anisotropic Gaussian smoothing to enhance…
We consider smooth stochastic convex optimization problems in the context of algorithms which are based on directional derivatives of the objective function. This context can be considered as an intermediate one between derivative-free…
A hypodifferential is a compact family of affine mappings that defines a local max-type approximation of a nonsmooth convex function. We present a general theory of hypodifferentials of nonsmooth convex functions defined on a Banach space.…
We study fundamental limits of first-order stochastic optimization in a range of nonconvex settings, including L-smooth functions satisfying Quasar-Convexity (QC), Quadratic Growth (QG), and Restricted Secant Inequalities (RSI). While the…
Low-rank and nonsmooth matrix optimization problems capture many fundamental tasks in statistics and machine learning. While significant progress has been made in recent years in developing efficient methods for \textit{smooth} low-rank…
In this paper, we propose the Bi-Sub-Gradient (Bi-SG) method, which is a generalization of the classical sub-gradient method to the setting of convex bi-level optimization problems. This is a first-order method that is very easy to…