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In this paper, we consider non-smooth convex optimization with a zeroth-order oracle corrupted by symmetric stochastic noise. Unlike the existing high-probability results requiring the noise to have bounded $\kappa$-th moment with $\kappa…

In this paper, we propose and analyze algorithms for zeroth-order optimization of non-convex composite objectives, focusing on reducing the complexity dependence on dimensionality. This is achieved by exploiting the low dimensional…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-08-16 Weijia Shao , Sahin Albayrak

In this paper, we consider a class of structured nonconvex nonsmooth optimization problems, in which the objective function is formed by the sum of a possibly nonsmooth nonconvex function and a differentiable function whose gradient is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-10-01 Tan Nhat Pham , Minh N. Dao , Rakibuzzaman Shah , Nargiz Sultanova , Guoyin Li , Syed Islam

We analyze stochastic algorithms for optimizing nonconvex, nonsmooth finite-sum problems, where the nonconvex part is smooth and the nonsmooth part is convex. Surprisingly, unlike the smooth case, our knowledge of this fundamental problem…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-05-24 Sashank J. Reddi , Suvrit Sra , Barnabas Poczos , Alex Smola

This paper considers zeroth-order optimization for stochastic convex minimization problem. We propose a parameter-free stochastic zeroth-order method (POEM) by introducing a step-size scheme based on the distance over finite difference and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-06 Kunjie Ren , Luo Luo

We consider the problem of minimizing a smooth, Lipschitz, convex function over a compact, convex set using sub-zeroth-order oracles: an oracle that outputs the sign of the directional derivative for a given point and a given direction, an…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-03-02 Mustafa O. Karabag , Cyrus Neary , Ufuk Topcu

We study unconstrained optimization problems of nonsmooth, nonconvex Lipschitz functions, using only noisy pairwise comparisons governed by a known link function. Our goal is to compute a $(\delta,\varepsilon)$-Goldstein stationary point.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-10 Taha El Bakkali , El Mahdi Chayti , Omar Saadi

In this paper, we present several new results on minimizing a nonsmooth and nonconvex function under a Lipschitz condition. Recent work shows that while the classical notion of Clarke stationarity is computationally intractable up to some…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-11-08 Michael I. Jordan , Tianyi Lin , Manolis Zampetakis

We propose a single time-scale stochastic subgradient method for constrained optimization of a composition of several nonsmooth and nonconvex functions. The functions are assumed to be locally Lipschitz and differentiable in a generalized…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-12-22 Andrzej Ruszczynski

We study stochastic zeroth-order optimization with decision-dependent distributions, where the sampling law depends on the current decision and only noisy function values are available. For the non-smooth non-convex setting, we establish an…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-08 Chengchang Liu , Zongqi Wan , Haishan Ye , John C. S. Lui

Inspired by regularization techniques in statistics and machine learning, we study complementary composite minimization in the stochastic setting. This problem corresponds to the minimization of the sum of a (weakly) smooth function endowed…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-24 Alexandre d'Aspremont , Cristóbal Guzmán , Clément Lezane

Recently, convex nested stochastic composite optimization (NSCO) has received considerable attention for its applications in reinforcement learning and risk-averse optimization. The current NSCO algorithms have worse stochastic oracle…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-06-22 Zhe Zhang , Guanghui Lan

In this paper we consider stochastic weakly convex composite problems, however without the existence of a stochastic subgradient oracle. We present a derivative free algorithm that uses a two point approximation for computing a gradient…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-02-20 V. Kungurtsev , F. Rinaldi

In this paper we propose a generalized condition for a sharp minimum, somewhat similar to the inexact oracle proposed recently by Devolder-Glineur-Nesterov. The proposed approach makes it possible to extend the class of applicability of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-12-13 S. S. Ablaev , D. V. Makarenko , F. S. Stonyakin , M. S. Alkousa , I. V. Baran

Gradient-free/zeroth-order methods for black-box convex optimization have been extensively studied in the last decade with the main focus on oracle calls complexity. In this paper, besides the oracle complexity, we focus also on iteration…

In this study, we consider an optimization problem with uncertainty dependent on decision variables, which has recently attracted attention due to its importance in machine learning and pricing applications. In this problem, the gradient of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-31 Yuya Hikima , Akiko Takeda

Composite minimization involves a collection of functions which are aggregated in a nonsmooth manner. It covers, as a particular case, smooth approximation of minimax games, minimization of max-type functions, and simple composite…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-03-04 Yassine Nabou , Ion Necoara

We introduce new global and local inexact oracle concepts for a wide class of convex functions in composite convex minimization. Such inexact oracles naturally come from primal-dual framework, barrier smoothing, inexact computations of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-02-25 Tianxiao Sun , Ion Necoara , Quoc Tran-Dinh

First-order optimization methods are crucial for solving large-scale data processing problems, particularly those involving convex non-smooth composite objectives. For such problems with convex non-smooth composite objectives, we introduce…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-06 Endrit Dosti , Sergiy A. Vorobyov , Themistoklis Charalambous

This paper considers the problem for finding the $(\delta,\epsilon)$-Goldstein stationary point of Lipschitz continuous objective, which is a rich function class to cover a great number of important applications. We construct a zeroth-order…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-10-22 Chengchang Liu , Chaowen Guan , Jianhao He , John C. S. Lui