Related papers: Difference of Convex (DC) approach for neural netw…
In this paper, we present some theoretical work to explain why simple gradient descent methods are so successful in solving non-convex optimization problems in learning large-scale neural networks (NN). After introducing a mathematical tool…
In this work, we propose a (linearized) Alternating Direction Method-of-Multipliers (ADMM) algorithm for minimizing a convex function subject to a nonconvex constraint. We focus on the special case where such constraint arises from the…
Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are very popular because of their high performance in various cognitive tasks in Machine Learning (ML). Recent advancements in DNNs have brought beyond human accuracy in many tasks, but at the cost of high…
Data sparsity is a common issue to train machine learning tools such as neural networks for engineering and scientific applications, where experiments and simulations are expensive. Recently physics-constrained neural networks (PCNNs) were…
This paper investigates the relation between sequential convex programming (SCP) as, e.g., defined in [24] and DC (difference of two convex functions) programming. We first present an SCP algorithm for solving nonlinear optimization…
Difference-of-convex (DC) optimization problems are shown to be equivalent to the minimization of a Lipschitz-differentiable "envelope". A gradient method on this surrogate function yields a novel (sub)gradient-free proximal algorithm which…
In this work the minimization problem for the difference of convex (DC) functions is studied by using Moreau envelopes and the descent method with Moreau gradient is employed to approximate the numerical solution. The main regularization…
Consensus optimization has received considerable attention in recent years. A number of decentralized algorithms have been proposed for {convex} consensus optimization. However, to the behaviors or consensus \emph{nonconvex} optimization,…
In decentralized consensus optimization, a connected network of agents collaboratively minimize the sum of their local objective functions over a common decision variable, where their information exchange is restricted between the…
The task of approximating an arbitrary convex function arises in several learning problems such as convex regression, learning with a difference of convex (DC) functions, and learning Bregman or $f$-divergences. In this paper, we develop…
In this paper, we study the convergence rate of the DCA (Difference-of-Convex Algorithm), also known as the convex-concave procedure, with two different termination criteria that are suitable for smooth and nonsmooth decompositions…
Training neural networks requires optimizing a loss function that may be highly irregular, and in particular neither convex nor smooth. Popular training algorithms are based on stochastic gradient descent with momentum (SGDM), for which…
This paper considers nonconvex distributed constrained optimization over networks, modeled as directed (possibly time-varying) graphs. We introduce the first algorithmic framework for the minimization of the sum of a smooth nonconvex…
Novel coordinate descent (CD) methods are proposed for minimizing nonconvex functions consisting of three terms: (i) a continuously differentiable term, (ii) a simple convex term, and (iii) a concave and continuous term. First, by extending…
Training deep neural networks (DNNs) efficiently is a challenge due to the associated highly nonconvex optimization. The backpropagation (backprop) algorithm has long been the most widely used algorithm for gradient computation of…
We investigate a difference-of-convex (DC) formulation where the second term is allowed to be weakly convex. We examine the precise behavior of a single iteration of the difference-of-convex algorithm (DCA), providing a tight…
Two aspects of neural networks that have been extensively studied in the recent literature are their function approximation properties and their training by gradient descent methods. The approximation problem seeks accurate approximations…
The difference-of-convex algorithm (DCA) is a conceptually simple method for the minimization of (possibly) nonconvex functions that are expressed as the difference of two convex functions. At each iteration, DCA constructs a global…
Motivated by the need for decentralized learning, this paper aims at designing a distributed algorithm for solving nonconvex problems with general linear constraints over a multi-agent network. In the considered problem, each agent owns…
We propose a new unified framework for describing and designing gradient-based convex optimization methods from a numerical analysis perspective. There the key is the new concept of weak discrete gradients (weak DGs), which is a…