Related papers: First-order SDSOS-convex semi-algebraic optimizati…
The problem of optimizing over the cone of nonnegative polynomials is a fundamental problem in computational mathematics, with applications to polynomial optimization, control, machine learning, game theory, and combinatorics, among others.…
We consider the fundamental problem in non-convex optimization of efficiently reaching a stationary point. In contrast to the convex case, in the long history of this basic problem, the only known theoretical results on first-order…
In this report, we study decentralized stochastic optimization to minimize a sum of smooth and strongly convex cost functions when the functions are distributed over a directed network of nodes. In contrast to the existing work, we use…
In this paper, we propose an inexact multi-block ADMM-type first-order method for solving a class of high-dimensional convex composite conic optimization problems to moderate accuracy. The design of this method combines an inexact 2-block…
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 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…
High-order tensor methods that employ Taylor-based local models (of degree $p\ge 3$) within adaptive regularization frameworks have been recently proposed for both convex and nonconvex optimization problems. They have been shown to have…
We consider a class of nonconvex nonsmooth multicomposite optimization problems where the objective function consists of a Tikhonov regularizer and a composition of multiple nonconvex nonsmooth component functions. Such optimization…
We introduce a new framework for unifying and systematizing the performance analysis of first-order black-box optimization algorithms for unconstrained convex minimization. The low-cost iteration complexity enjoyed by first-order algorithms…
In recent years, nonconvex minimax problems have attracted significant attention due to their broad applications in machine learning, including generative adversarial networks, robust optimization and adversarial training. Most existing…
This paper studies decentralized optimization problem $f(\mathbf{x})=\frac{1}{m}\sum_{i=1}^m f_i(\mathbf{x})$, where each local function has the form of $f_i(\mathbf{x}) = {\mathbb E}\left[F(\mathbf{x};{\boldsymbol \xi}_i)\right]$ which is…
Classical results show that gradient descent converges linearly to minimizers of smooth strongly convex functions. A natural question is whether there exists a locally nearly linearly convergent method for nonsmooth functions with quadratic…
We consider the problem of optimizing a high-dimensional convex function using stochastic zeroth-order queries. Under sparsity assumptions on the gradients or function values, we present two algorithms: a successive component/feature…
Higher-order tensor methods were recently proposed for minimizing smooth convex and nonconvex functions. Higher-order algorithms accelerate the convergence of the classical first-order methods thanks to the higher-order derivatives used in…
Clustering may be the most fundamental problem in unsupervised learning which is still active in machine learning research because its importance in many applications. Popular methods like K-means, may suffer from instability as they are…
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 introduce a stochastic projected subgradient method for weakly convex (i.e., uniformly prox-regular) nonsmooth, nonconvex functions---a wide class of functions which includes the additive and convex composite classes. At a…
While first-order optimization methods such as stochastic gradient descent (SGD) are popular in machine learning (ML), they come with well-known deficiencies, including relatively-slow convergence, sensitivity to the settings of…
In this paper, we introduce a new stochastic approximation (SA) type algorithm, namely the randomized stochastic gradient (RSG) method, for solving an important class of nonlinear (possibly nonconvex) stochastic programming (SP) problems.…
We consider a class of structured, nonconvex, nonsmooth optimization problems under orthogonality constraints, where the objectives combine a smooth function, a nonsmooth concave function, and a nonsmooth weakly convex function. This class…