Related papers: Online Inference of Constrained Optimization: Prim…
We consider the problem of online reinforcement learning for the Stochastic Shortest Path (SSP) problem modeled as an unknown MDP with an absorbing state. We propose PSRL-SSP, a simple posterior sampling-based reinforcement learning…
Online prediction methods are typically presented as serial algorithms running on a single processor. However, in the age of web-scale prediction problems, it is increasingly common to encounter situations where a single processor cannot…
We introduce BayeSQP, a novel algorithm for general black-box optimization that merges the structure of sequential quadratic programming with concepts from Bayesian optimization. BayeSQP employs second-order Gaussian process surrogates for…
We propose smoothed primal-dual algorithms for solving stochastic and smooth nonconvex optimization problems with linear inequality constraints. Our algorithms are single-loop and only require a single stochastic gradient based on one…
Stochastic constraints, which incorporate both deterministic parameters and random variables, extend classical deterministic constraints by explicitly accounting for uncertainty. These constraints are increasingly prevalent in data science,…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is perhaps the most prevalent optimization method in modern machine learning. Contrary to the empirical practice of sampling from the datasets without replacement and with (possible) reshuffling at each…
Iterative trajectory optimization techniques for non-linear dynamical systems are among the most powerful and sample-efficient methods of model-based reinforcement learning and approximate optimal control. By leveraging time-variant local…
Logistic regression, the Support Vector Machine (SVM), and least squares are well-studied methods in the statistical and computer science community, with various practical applications. High-dimensional data arriving on a real-time basis…
We propose an inexact variable-metric proximal point algorithm to accelerate gradient-based optimization algorithms. The proposed scheme, called QNing can be notably applied to incremental first-order methods such as the stochastic…
Conic optimization plays a crucial role in many machine learning (ML) problems. However, practical algorithms for conic constrained ML problems with large datasets are often limited to specific use cases, as stochastic algorithms for…
Motivated by applications arising from large scale optimization and machine learning, we consider stochastic quasi-Newton (SQN) methods for solving unconstrained convex optimization problems. The convergence analysis of the SQN methods,…
An optimization algorithm for a group of nonsmooth nonconvex problems inspired by two-stage stochastic programming problems is proposed. The main challenges for these problems include (1) the problems lack the popular lower-type properties…
In this work, we study a novel class of projection-based algorithms for linearly constrained problems (LCPs) which have a lot of applications in statistics, optimization, and machine learning. Conventional primal gradient-based methods for…
Contextual stochastic optimization is an advanced methodology to model uncertainty in the presence of contextual information during decision planning processes. Although classical methodologies focus on minimizing the expectation of a…
Under interpolation-type assumptions such as the strong growth condition, stochastic optimization methods can attain convergence rates comparable to full-batch methods, but their performance, particularly for SGD, remains highly sensitive…
Two-stage stochastic programming is a popular framework for optimization under uncertainty, where decision variables are split between first-stage decisions, and second-stage (or recourse) decisions, with the latter being adjusted after…
Quadratically constrained quadratic programs (QCQPs) are ubiquitous in optimization: Such problems arise in applications from operations research, power systems, signal processing, chemical engineering, and portfolio theory, among others.…
In this paper, we propose a practical online method for solving a class of distributionally robust optimization (DRO) with non-convex objectives, which has important applications in machine learning for improving the robustness of neural…
This paper considers stochastic optimization problems for a large class of objective functions, including convex and continuous submodular. Stochastic proximal gradient methods have been widely used to solve such problems; however, their…
A challenging problem in decentralized optimization is to develop algorithms with fast convergence on random and time varying topologies under unreliable and bandwidth-constrained communication network. This paper studies a stochastic…