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Non-convex optimization is a critical tool in advancing machine learning, especially for complex models like deep neural networks and support vector machines. Despite challenges such as multiple local minima and saddle points, non-convex…
We analyze convergence rates of stochastic optimization procedures for non-smooth convex optimization problems. By combining randomized smoothing techniques with accelerated gradient methods, we obtain convergence rates of stochastic…
We develop a class of algorithms, as variants of the stochastically controlled stochastic gradient (SCSG) methods (Lei and Jordan, 2016), for the smooth non-convex finite-sum optimization problem. Assuming the smoothness of each component,…
We study the random reshuffling (RR) method for smooth nonconvex optimization problems with a finite-sum structure. Though this method is widely utilized in practice such as the training of neural networks, its convergence behavior is only…
This paper proposes a novel technique called "successive stochastic smoothing" that optimizes nonsmooth and discontinuous functions while considering various constraints. Our methodology enables local and global optimization, making it a…
This paper studies the complexity for finding approximate stationary points of nonconvex-strongly-concave (NC-SC) smooth minimax problems, in both general and averaged smooth finite-sum settings. We establish nontrivial lower complexity…
Stochastic optimization has found wide applications in minimizing objective functions in machine learning, which motivates a lot of theoretical studies to understand its practical success. Most of existing studies focus on the convergence…
While many distributed optimization algorithms have been proposed for solving smooth or convex problems over the networks, few of them can handle non-convex and non-smooth problems. Based on a proximal primal-dual approach, this paper…
We study unconstrained optimization problems with nonsmooth and convex objective function in the form of a mathematical expectation. The proposed method approximates the expected objective function with a sample average function using…
This paper investigates projection-free algorithms for stochastic constrained multi-level optimization. In this context, the objective function is a nested composition of several smooth functions, and the decision set is closed and convex.…
Stochastic compositional minimax problems are prevalent in machine learning, yet there are only limited established on the convergence of this class of problems. In this paper, we propose a formal definition of the stochastic compositional…
In this paper, we study the decentralized optimization problem of minimizing a finite sum of continuously differentiable and possibly nonconvex functions over a fixed-connected undirected network. We propose a unified decentralized…
Minimizing finite sums of functions is a central problem in optimization, arising in numerous practical applications. Such problems are commonly addressed using first-order optimization methods. However, these procedures cannot be used in…
This paper addresses the study of a new class of nonsmooth optimization problems, where the objective is represented as a difference of two generally nonconvex functions. We propose and develop a novel Newton-type algorithm to solving such…
In this paper, we consider high-dimensional nonconvex square-root-loss regression problems and introduce a proximal majorization-minimization (PMM) algorithm for these problems. Our key idea for making the proposed PMM to be efficient is to…
We study nonconvex stochastic optimization under the Blum-Gladyshev ($\mathsf{BG}$-0) noise model, where the stochastic gradient variance grows quadratically with the distance from the initialization. We consider this problem under both…
Our work focuses on stochastic gradient methods for optimizing a smooth non-convex loss function with a non-smooth non-convex regularizer. Research on this class of problem is quite limited, and until recently no non-asymptotic convergence…
We study the convergence properties of the 'greedy' Frank-Wolfe algorithm with a unit step size, for a convex maximization problem over a compact set. We assume the function satisfies smoothness and strong convexity. These assumptions…
Nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization problems are important and challenging for statistics and machine learning. In this paper, we propose Projected Proximal Gradient Descent (PPGD) which solves a class of nonconvex and nonsmooth…
In this work, we consider constrained stochastic optimization problems under hidden convexity, i.e., those that admit a convex reformulation via non-linear (but invertible) map $c(\cdot)$. A number of non-convex problems ranging from…