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This paper considers the nonconvex nonsmooth problem in which the objective function is Lipschitz continuous. We focus on the stochastic setting where the algorithm can access stochastic function value evaluations with heavy-tailed noise,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-26 Zhuanghua Liu , Luo Luo

This paper studies the distributed optimization problem under the influence of heavy-tailed gradient noises. Here, a heavy-tailed noise means that the noise does not necessarily satisfy the bounded variance assumption. Instead, it satisfies…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-12 Chao Sun , Huiming Zhang , Bo Chen , Li Yu

Recent studies have provided both empirical and theoretical evidence illustrating that heavy tails can emerge in stochastic gradient descent (SGD) in various scenarios. Such heavy tails potentially result in iterates with diverging…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-02-23 Hongjian Wang , Mert Gürbüzbalaban , Lingjiong Zhu , Umut Şimşekli , Murat A. Erdogdu

This paper studies a stochastic algorithm for linearly constrained nonconvex optimization, where the objective function is smooth but only unbiased stochastic gradients with bounded variance are available. We propose a momentum-based…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-16 Chenyang Qiu , Mihitha Maithripala , Zongli Lin

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 consider stochastic optimization with delayed gradients where, at each time step $t$, the algorithm makes an update using a stale stochastic gradient from step $t - d_t$ for some arbitrary delay $d_t$. This setting abstracts asynchronous…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-11-16 Alon Cohen , Amit Daniely , Yoel Drori , Tomer Koren , Mariano Schain

Optimization under heavy-tailed noise has become popular recently, since it better fits many modern machine learning tasks, as captured by empirical observations. Concretely, instead of a finite second moment on gradient noise, a bounded…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-19 Zijian Liu

Hierarchical optimization refers to problems with interdependent decision variables and objectives, such as minimax and bilevel formulations. While various algorithms have been proposed, existing methods and analyses lack adaptivity in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-27 Xiaochuan Gong , Jie Hao , Mingrui Liu

The training of modern machine learning models often consists in solving high-dimensional non-convex optimisation problems that are subject to large-scale data. In this context, momentum-based stochastic optimisation algorithms have become…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-11-06 Kexin Jin , Jonas Latz , Chenguang Liu , Alessandro Scagliotti

We consider smooth stochastic convex optimization problems in the context of algorithms which are based on directional derivatives of the objective function. This context can be considered as an intermediate one between derivative-free…

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

High-dimensional linear regression under heavy-tailed noise or outlier corruption is challenging, both computationally and statistically. Convex approaches have been proven statistically optimal but suffer from high computational costs,…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-05-11 Yinan Shen , Jingyang Li , Jian-Feng Cai , Dong Xia

In this paper, we describe a new way to get convergence rates for optimal methods in smooth (strongly) convex optimization tasks. Our approach is based on results for tasks where gradients have nonrandom small noises. Unlike previous…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-07-14 Darina Dvinskikh , Alexander Tyurin , Alexander Gasnikov , Sergey Omelchenko

We consider the problem of minimizing a convex function that is evolving according to unknown and possibly stochastic dynamics, which may depend jointly on time and on the decision variable itself. Such problems abound in the machine…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-05-30 Joshua Cutler , Dmitriy Drusvyatskiy , Zaid Harchaoui

In this work, we present a globalized stochastic semismooth Newton method for solving stochastic optimization problems involving smooth nonconvex and nonsmooth convex terms in the objective function. We assume that only noisy gradient and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-03-12 Andre Milzarek , Xiantao Xiao , Shicong Cen , Zaiwen Wen , Michael Ulbrich

Under mild assumptions stochastic gradient methods asymptotically achieve an optimal rate of convergence if the arithmetic mean of all iterates is returned as an approximate optimal solution. However, in the absence of stochastic noise, the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-10-06 Melinda Hagedorn , Florian Jarre

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

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is a cornerstone of large-scale optimization, yet its theoretical behavior under heavy-tailed noise -- common in modern machine learning and reinforcement learning -- remains poorly understood. In this…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-08-08 Ilyas Fatkhullin , Florian Hübler , Guanghui Lan

Many tasks in modern machine learning are observed to involve heavy-tailed gradient noise during the optimization process. To manage this realistic and challenging setting, new mechanisms, such as gradient clipping and gradient…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-19 Zijian Liu

In this paper, the problem of distributed optimization is studied via a network of agents. Each agent only has access to a noisy gradient of its own objective function, and can communicate with its neighbors via a network. To handle this…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-06-19 Yuchen Yang , Kaihong Lu , Long Wang

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