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Gradient methods are among the simplest yet most widely used algorithms for unconstrained optimization. Motivated by a geometric property of the steepest descent (SD) method that can alleviate the zigzag behavior in quadratic problems, we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-21 Ya Shen , Qing-Na Li , Yu-Hong Dai

Sharpness-Aware Minimization (SAM) has substantially improved the generalization of neural networks under various settings. Despite the success, its effectiveness remains poorly understood. In this work, we discover an intriguing phenomenon…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-21 Zhanpeng Zhou , Mingze Wang , Yuchen Mao , Bingrui Li , Junchi Yan

Natural gradient descent is a principled method for adapting the parameters of a statistical model on-line using an underlying Riemannian parameter space to redefine the direction of steepest descent. The algorithm is examined via methods…

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks · Physics 2009-10-31 Magnus Rattray , David Saad

In this paper, we examine the convergence of mirror descent in a class of stochastic optimization problems that are not necessarily convex (or even quasi-convex), and which we call variationally coherent. Since the standard technique of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-07-17 Zhengyuan Zhou , Panayotis Mertikopoulos , Nicholas Bambos , Stephen Boyd , Peter Glynn

We propose a novel algorithm for the fitting of 3D human shape to images. Combining the accuracy and refinement capabilities of iterative gradient-based optimization techniques with the robustness of deep neural networks, we propose a…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2020-08-20 Jie Song , Xu Chen , Otmar Hilliges

We study the max-margin solutions reached by mirror flow in deep neural networks with homogeneous activation functions. Extending classical results on gradient flow, we derive a novel balance equation for mirror flow from convex duality,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-20 Tom Jacobs , Guido Montufar

The ADAM optimizer is exceedingly popular in the deep learning community. Often it works very well, sometimes it doesn't. Why? We interpret ADAM as a combination of two aspects: for each weight, the update direction is determined by the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-15 Lukas Balles , Philipp Hennig

We propose a continuous-time scheme for large-scale optimization that introduces individual, adaptive momentum coefficients regulated by the kinetic energy of each model parameter. This approach automatically adjusts to local landscape…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Aikaterini Karoni , Rajit Rajpal , Benedict Leimkuhler , Gabriel Stoltz

Following the introduction of Adam, several novel adaptive optimizers for deep learning have been proposed. These optimizers typically excel in some tasks but may not outperform Adam uniformly across all tasks. In this work, we introduce…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-18 Kaan Ozkara , Can Karakus , Parameswaran Raman , Mingyi Hong , Shoham Sabach , Branislav Kveton , Volkan Cevher

A key challenge in building theoretical foundations for deep learning is the complex optimization dynamics of neural networks, resulting from the high-dimensional interactions between the large number of network parameters. Such non-trivial…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-07 Mohammad Pezeshki , Amartya Mitra , Yoshua Bengio , Guillaume Lajoie

Much recent attention has been devoted to gradient descent algorithms where the steepest descent step size is replaced by a similar one from a previous iteration or gets updated only once every second step, thus forming a {\em faster…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2013-08-13 Hui Huang , Uri Ascher

In this paper, we develop a new optimization framework for the least squares learning problem via fully connected neural networks or physics-informed neural networks. The gradient descent sometimes behaves inefficiently in deep learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-01 Yaru Liu , Yiqi Gu , Michael K. Ng

Optimizer is an essential component for the success of deep learning, which guides the neural network to update the parameters according to the loss on the training set. SGD and Adam are two classical and effective optimizers on which…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-04 Yineng Chen , Zuchao Li , Lefei Zhang , Bo Du , Hai Zhao

Training deep neural network is a high dimensional and a highly non-convex optimization problem. Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm and it's variations are the current state-of-the-art solvers for this task. However, due to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-01-17 Xi He , Dheevatsa Mudigere , Mikhail Smelyanskiy , Martin Takáč

In this paper, we provide some analysis on the asymptotic escape of strict saddles in manifold optimization using the projected gradient descent (PGD) algorithm. One of our main contributions is that we extend the current analysis to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-06-30 Thomas Y. Hou , Zhenzhen Li , Ziyun Zhang

Optimal selection of optimization algorithms is crucial for training deep learning models. The Adam optimizer has gained significant attention due to its efficiency and wide applicability. However, to enhance the adaptability of optimizers…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-09 Chengxi Pan , Junshang Chen , Jingrui Ye

The concept of learning to optimize involves utilizing a trainable optimization strategy rather than relying on manually defined full gradient estimations such as ADAM. We present a framework that jointly trains the full gradient estimator…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Ruiqi Wang , Diego Klabjan

Gradient clipping is commonly used in training deep neural networks partly due to its practicability in relieving the exploding gradient problem. Recently, \citet{zhang2019gradient} show that clipped (stochastic) Gradient Descent (GD)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-30 Bohang Zhang , Jikai Jin , Cong Fang , Liwei Wang

We develop a novel framework to study smooth and strongly convex optimization algorithms, both deterministic and stochastic. Focusing on quadratic functions we are able to examine optimization algorithms as a recursive application of linear…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-03-25 Yossi Arjevani , Shai Shalev-Shwartz , Ohad Shamir

Learning to optimize - the idea that we can learn from data algorithms that optimize a numerical criterion - has recently been at the heart of a growing number of research efforts. One of the most challenging issues within this approach is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-02-21 Louis Faury , Flavian Vasile