Related papers: Polyak Stepsize: Estimating Optimal Functional Val…
Gradient descent and its variants are de facto standard algorithms for training machine learning models. As gradient descent is sensitive to its hyperparameters, we need to tune the hyperparameters carefully using a grid search. However,…
We propose an adaptive step-size rule for decentralized optimization. Choosing a step-size that balances convergence and stability is challenging. This is amplified in the decentralized setting as agents observe only local (possibly…
The Polyak stepsize has been widely used in subgradient methods for non-smooth convex optimization. However, calculating the stepsize requires the optimal value, which is generally unknown. Therefore, dynamic estimations of the optimal…
This paper revisits the Polyak step size schedule for convex optimization problems, proving that a simple variant of it simultaneously attains near optimal convergence rates for the gradient descent algorithm, for all ranges of strong…
In machine learning applications, it is well known that carefully designed learning rate (step size) schedules can significantly improve the convergence of commonly used first-order optimization algorithms. Therefore how to set step size…
We propose a stochastic variant of the classical Polyak step-size (Polyak, 1987) commonly used in the subgradient method. Although computing the Polyak step-size requires knowledge of the optimal function values, this information is readily…
In this paper we consider a composite optimization problem that minimizes the sum of a weakly smooth function and a convex function with either a bounded domain or a uniformly convex structure. In particular, we first present a…
Schedule-Free SGD, proposed in [Defazio et al., 2024], achieves optimal convergence rates without requiring the training horizon in advance, by replacing learning rate schedules with a principled form of iterate averaging. However, the…
Policy gradient is a widely utilized and foundational algorithm in the field of reinforcement learning (RL). Renowned for its convergence guarantees and stability compared to other RL algorithms, its practical application is often hindered…
In this paper, we revisit a classical adaptive stepsize strategy for gradient descent: the Polyak stepsize (PolyakGD), originally proposed in Polyak (1969). We study the convergence behavior of PolyakGD from two perspectives: tight…
We introduce a novel dynamic learning-rate scheduling scheme grounded in theory with the goal of simplifying the manual and time-consuming tuning of schedules in practice. Our approach is based on estimating the locally-optimal stepsize,…
Accelerated algorithms for minimizing smooth strongly convex functions usually require knowledge of the strong convexity parameter $\mu$. In the case of an unknown $\mu$, current adaptive techniques are based on restart schemes. When the…
In large-scale learning algorithms, the momentum term is usually included in the stochastic sub-gradient method to improve the learning speed because it can navigate ravines efficiently to reach a local minimum. However, step-size and…
We consider minimizing an objective function subject to constraints defined by the intersection of lower-level sets of convex functions. We study two cases: (i) strongly convex and Lipschitz-smooth objective function and (ii) convex but…
Stepsize selection remains a critical challenge in the practical implementation of distributed optimization. Existing distributed algorithms often rely on restrictive prior knowledge of global objective functions, such as Lipschitz…
We consider the problem of minimizing a convex function over a closed convex set, with Projected Gradient Descent (PGD). We propose a fully parameter-free version of AdaGrad, which is adaptive to the distance between the initialization and…
The Polyak stepsize has been proven to be a fundamental stepsize in convex optimization, giving near optimal gradient descent rates across a wide range of assumptions. The universality of the Polyak stepsize has also inspired many…
Hyperparameter tuning, particularly the selection of an appropriate learning rate in adaptive gradient training methods, remains a challenge. To tackle this challenge, in this paper, we propose a novel parameter-free optimizer,…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is one of the many iterative optimization methods that are widely used in solving machine learning problems. These methods display valuable properties and attract researchers and industrial machine learning…
In this work, we propose new adaptive step size strategies that improve several stochastic gradient methods. Our first method (StoPS) is based on the classical Polyak step size (Polyak, 1987) and is an extension of the recent development of…