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Stochastic bilevel optimization (SBO) is becoming increasingly essential in machine learning due to its versatility in handling nested structures. To address large-scale SBO, decentralized approaches have emerged as effective paradigms in…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-27 Boao Kong , Shuchen Zhu , Songtao Lu , Xinmeng Huang , Kun Yuan

The popularity of bi-level optimization (BO) in deep learning has spurred a growing interest in studying gradient-based BO algorithms. However, existing algorithms involve two coupled learning rates that can be affected by approximation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-03 Chen Fan , Gaspard Choné-Ducasse , Mark Schmidt , Christos Thrampoulidis

In this paper, we develop zeroth-order algorithms with provably (nearly) optimal sample complexity for stochastic bilevel optimization, where only noisy function evaluations are available. We propose two distinct algorithms: the first is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-07 Alireza Aghasi , Jeongyeol Kwon , Saeed Ghadimi

Bilevel optimization is an important formulation for many machine learning problems. Current bilevel optimization algorithms assume that the gradient of the upper-level function is Lipschitz. However, recent studies reveal that certain…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-19 Jie Hao , Xiaochuan Gong , Mingrui Liu

We introduce a hybrid stochastic estimator to design stochastic gradient algorithms for solving stochastic optimization problems. Such a hybrid estimator is a convex combination of two existing biased and unbiased estimators and leads to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-05-16 Quoc Tran-Dinh , Nhan H. Pham , Dzung T. Phan , Lam M. Nguyen

This paper considers the problem of minimizing an expectation function over a closed convex set, coupled with a {\color{black} functional or expectation} constraint on either decision variables or problem parameters. We first present a new…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-10-05 Guanghui Lan , Zhiqiang Zhou

Simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation (SPSA) is widely used in stochastic optimization due to its high efficiency, asymptotic stability, and reduced number of required loss function measurements. However, the standard SPSA…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-02-07 Zhichao Jia , Ziyi Wei , James C. Spall

Although upper bound guarantees for bilevel optimization have been widely studied, progress on lower bounds has been limited due to the complexity of the bilevel structure. In this work, we focus on the smooth nonconvex-strongly-convex…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-27 Kaiyi Ji

Stochastic approximation (SA) is a classical approach for stochastic convex optimization. Previous studies have demonstrated that the convergence rate of SA can be improved by introducing either smoothness or strong convexity condition. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-01-29 Lijun Zhang , Zhi-Hua Zhou

Optimal control of obstacle problems arises in a wide range of applications and is computationally challenging due to its nonsmoothness, nonlinearity, and bilevel structure. Classical numerical approaches rely on mesh-based discretization…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-08 Yongcun Song , Shangzhi Zeng , Jin Zhang , Lvgang Zhang

We study a class of algorithms for solving bilevel optimization problems in both stochastic and deterministic settings when the inner-level objective is strongly convex. Specifically, we consider algorithms based on inexact implicit…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-07-12 Michael Arbel , Julien Mairal

Stochastic bilevel optimization (SBO) has been integrated into many machine learning paradigms recently, including hyperparameter optimization, meta learning, and reinforcement learning. Along with the wide range of applications, there have…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Xuelin Zhang , Hong Chen , Bin Gu , Tieliang Gong , Feng Zheng

Temporal-Difference (TD) learning with nonlinear smooth function approximation for policy evaluation has achieved great success in modern reinforcement learning. It is shown that such a problem can be reformulated as a stochastic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-25 Shuang Qiu , Zhuoran Yang , Xiaohan Wei , Jieping Ye , Zhaoran Wang

In this work, we develop analysis and algorithms for a class of (stochastic) bilevel optimization problems whose lower-level (LL) problem is strongly convex and linearly constrained. Most existing approaches for solving such problems rely…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-08 Prashant Khanduri , Ioannis Tsaknakis , Yihua Zhang , Sijia Liu , Mingyi Hong

In this paper, we study a class of stochastic bilevel optimization problems, also known as stochastic simple bilevel optimization, where we minimize a smooth stochastic objective function over the optimal solution set of another stochastic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-08-16 Jincheng Cao , Ruichen Jiang , Nazanin Abolfazli , Erfan Yazdandoost Hamedani , Aryan Mokhtari

This paper investigates a class of stochastic bilevel optimization problems where the upper-level function is nonconvex with potentially unbounded smoothness and the lower-level problem is strongly convex. These problems have significant…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-16 Xiaochuan Gong , Jie Hao , Mingrui Liu

Stochastic approximation (SA) with multiple coupled sequences has found broad applications in machine learning such as bilevel learning and reinforcement learning (RL). In this paper, we study the finite-time convergence of nonlinear SA…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-22 Han Shen , Tianyi Chen

Stochastic approximation (SA) algorithms have been widely applied in minimization problems when the loss functions and/or the gradient information are only accessible through noisy evaluations. Stochastic gradient (SG) descent---a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-08-26 Jingyi Zhu , Long Wang , James C. Spall

Stochastic minimax optimization on Riemannian manifolds has recently attracted significant attention due to its broad range of applications, such as robust training of neural networks and robust maximum likelihood estimation. Existing…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-11 Hongye Wang , Chang He , Bo Jiang

In this paper, we consider non-smooth convex optimization with a zeroth-order oracle corrupted by symmetric stochastic noise. Unlike the existing high-probability results requiring the noise to have bounded $\kappa$-th moment with $\kappa…