Related papers: Zeroth-order gradient estimators for stochastic pr…
In this paper, we consider the composite optimization problem, where the objective function integrates a continuously differentiable loss function with a nonsmooth regularization term. Moreover, only the function values for the…
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…
We consider a class of stochastic gradient optimization schemes. Assuming that the objective function is strongly convex, we prove weak error estimates which are uniform in time for the error between the solution of the numerical scheme,…
As application demands for zeroth-order (gradient-free) optimization accelerate, the need for variance reduced and faster converging approaches is also intensifying. This paper addresses these challenges by presenting: a) a comprehensive…
Min-max optimization is emerging as a key framework for analyzing problems of robustness to strategically and adversarially generated data. We propose a random reshuffling-based gradient free Optimistic Gradient Descent-Ascent algorithm for…
Stochastic optimization problems often involve data distributions that change in reaction to the decision variables. This is the case for example when members of the population respond to a deployed classifier by manipulating their features…
In this paper, we design and analyze a new family of adaptive subgradient methods for solving an important class of weakly convex (possibly nonsmooth) stochastic optimization problems. Adaptive methods that use exponential moving averages…
We propose a new stochastic optimization framework for empirical risk minimization problems such as those that arise in machine learning. The traditional approaches, such as (mini-batch) stochastic gradient descent (SGD), utilize an…
It seems that in the current age, computers, computation, and data have an increasingly important role to play in scientific research and discovery. This is reflected in part by the rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence,…
In this paper, we propose a method of distributed stochastic gradient descent (SGD), with low communication load and computational complexity, and still fast convergence. To reduce the communication load, at each iteration of the algorithm,…
Zeroth-order methods are extensively used in machine learning applications where gradients are infeasible or expensive to compute, such as black-box attacks, reinforcement learning, and language model fine-tuning. Existing optimization…
Federated learning heavily relies on distributed gradient descent techniques. In the situation where gradient information is not available, the gradients need to be estimated from zeroth-order information, which typically involves computing…
Functionally constrained stochastic optimization problems, where neither the objective function nor the constraint functions are analytically available, arise frequently in machine learning applications. In this work, assuming we only have…
Discretizations of Langevin diffusions provide a powerful method for sampling and Bayesian inference. However, such discretizations require evaluation of the gradient of the potential function. In several real-world scenarios, obtaining…
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…
In this paper, we propose a stochastic search algorithm for solving general optimization problems with little structure. The algorithm iteratively finds high quality solutions by randomly sampling candidate solutions from a parameterized…
Gradient Descent (GD) and Conjugate Gradient (CG) methods are among the most effective iterative algorithms for solving unconstrained optimization problems, particularly in machine learning and statistical modeling, where they are employed…
Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization is one key technique for machine learning problems where gradient calculation is expensive or impossible. Several variance reduced ZO proximal algorithms have been proposed to speed up ZO optimization for…
Saddle-point problems have recently gained increased attention from the machine learning community, mainly due to applications in training Generative Adversarial Networks using stochastic gradients. At the same time, in some applications…
Frequently, when dealing with many machine learning models, optimization problems appear to be challenging due to a limited understanding of the constructions and characterizations of the objective functions in these problems. Therefore,…