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In this paper, we propose robust stochastic algorithms for solving convex compositional problems of the form $f(\E_\xi g(\cdot; \xi)) + r(\cdot)$ by establishing {\bf sub-Gaussian confidence bounds} under weak assumptions about the tails of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-19 Yan Yan , Xin Man , Tianbao Yang

In this paper, we consider nonlinear optimization problems with a stochastic objective and deterministic equality constraints. We propose a Trust-Region Stochastic Sequential Quadratic Programming (TR-SSQP) method and establish its…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-02 Yuchen Fang , Javad Lavaei , Sen Na

We study large deviation upper bounds and mean-squared error (MSE) guarantees of a general framework of nonlinear stochastic gradient methods in the online setting, in the presence of heavy-tailed noise. Unlike existing works that rely on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-25 Aleksandar Armacki , Shuhua Yu , Dragana Bajovic , Dusan Jakovetic , Soummya Kar

We introduce a general framework for nonlinear stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for the scenarios when gradient noise exhibits heavy tails. The proposed framework subsumes several popular nonlinearity choices, like clipped, normalized,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-04-07 Dusan Jakovetic , Dragana Bajovic , Anit Kumar Sahu , Soummya Kar , Nemanja Milosevic , Dusan Stamenkovic

We study convex composite optimization problems, where the objective function is given by the sum of a prox-friendly function and a convex function whose subgradients are estimated under heavy-tailed noise. Existing work often employs…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-14 Chuan He , Zhaosong Lu

High-probability analysis of stochastic first-order optimization methods under mild assumptions on the noise has been gaining a lot of attention in recent years. Typically, gradient clipping is one of the key algorithmic ingredients to…

In existing distributed stochastic optimization studies, it is usually assumed that the gradient noise has a bounded variance. However, recent research shows that the heavy-tailed noise, which allows an unbounded variance, is closer to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-15 Jun Hu , Chao Sun , Bo Chen , Jianzheng Wang , Zheming Wang

Recently, Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) and its variants have become the dominant methods in the large-scale optimization of machine learning (ML) problems. A variety of strategies have been proposed for tuning the step sizes, ranging…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-02 Xiaoyu Li

In the era of large-scale neural network models, optimization algorithms often struggle with generalization due to an overreliance on training loss. One key insight widely accepted in the machine learning community is the idea that wide…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-01 Bodu Gong , Gustavo Enrique Batista , Pierre Lafaye de Micheaux

Stochastic gradient descent is one of the most common iterative algorithms used in machine learning and its convergence analysis is a rich area of research. Understanding its convergence properties can help inform what modifications of it…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-25 Liam Madden , Emiliano Dall'Anese , Stephen Becker

We consider a first order stochastic optimization framework where, at each iteration, $K$ independent identically distributed (i.i.d.) data point samples are drawn, based on which stochastic gradients can be queried. We allow gradient noise…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-11 Manojlo Vukovic , Dusan Jakovetic

Classical stochastic gradient methods are well suited for minimizing expected-value objective functions. However, they do not apply to the minimization of a nonlinear function involving expected values or a composition of two expected-value…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2014-11-17 Mengdi Wang , Ethan X. Fang , Han Liu

We consider an unconstrained problem of minimizing a smooth convex function which is only available through noisy observations of its values, the noise consisting of two parts. Similar to stochastic optimization problems, the first part is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-09-22 Eduard Gorbunov , Pavel Dvurechensky , Alexander Gasnikov

We consider stochastic convex optimization problems where the objective is an expectation over smooth functions. For this setting we suggest a novel gradient estimate that combines two recent mechanism that are related to notion of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-06 Tehila Dahan , Kfir Y. Levy

We study convergence in high-probability of SGD-type methods in non-convex optimization and the presence of heavy-tailed noise. To combat the heavy-tailed noise, a general black-box nonlinear framework is considered, subsuming…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-11 Aleksandar Armacki , Dragana Bajovic , Dusan Jakovetic , Soummya Kar

In this paper, we study stochastic non-convex optimization with non-convex random functions. Recent studies on non-convex optimization revolve around establishing second-order convergence, i.e., converging to a nearly second-order optimal…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-11-02 Mingrui Liu , Tianbao Yang

We develop a worst-case complexity theory for stochastically preconditioned stochastic gradient descent (SPSGD) and its accelerated variants under heavy-tailed noise, a setting that encompasses widely used adaptive methods such as Adam,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-17 Yuchen Fang , James Demmel , Javad Lavaei

We propose and analyze several stochastic gradient algorithms for finding stationary points or local minimum in nonconvex, possibly with nonsmooth regularizer, finite-sum and online optimization problems. First, we propose a simple proximal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-23 Zhize Li , Jian Li

Dual averaging and gradient descent with their stochastic variants stand as the two canonical recipe books for first-order optimization: Every modern variant can be viewed as a descendant of one or the other. In the convex regime, these…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-28 Tuo Liu , El Mehdi Saad , Wojciech Kotłowski , Francesco Orabona

This work examines the convergence of stochastic gradient-based optimization algorithms that use early stopping based on a validation function. The form of early stopping we consider is that optimization terminates when the norm of the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-07-23 Thomas Flynn , Kwang Min Yu , Abid Malik , Nicolas D'Imperio , Shinjae Yoo