Related papers: Gradient Descent's Last Iterate is Often (slightly…
The main aim of this paper is to provide an analysis of gradient descent (GD) algorithms with gradient errors that do not necessarily vanish, asymptotically. In particular, sufficient conditions are presented for both stability (almost sure…
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…
We study the out-of-sample performance of multi-pass stochastic gradient descent (SGD) in the fundamental stochastic convex optimization (SCO) model. While one-pass SGD is known to achieve an optimal $\Theta(1/\sqrt{n})$ excess population…
We propose a general yet simple theorem describing the convergence of SGD under the arbitrary sampling paradigm. Our theorem describes the convergence of an infinite array of variants of SGD, each of which is associated with a specific…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and its variants are widely used and highly effective optimization methods in machine learning, especially for neural network training. By using a single datum or a small subset of the data, selected…
Large-scale nonconvex optimization problems are ubiquitous in modern machine learning, and among practitioners interested in solving them, Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) reigns supreme. We revisit the analysis of SGD in the nonconvex…
We provide a detailed study on the implicit bias of gradient descent when optimizing loss functions with strictly monotone tails, such as the logistic loss, over separable datasets. We look at two basic questions: (a) what are the…
Uniform stability is a notion of algorithmic stability that bounds the worst case change in the model output by the algorithm when a single data point in the dataset is replaced. An influential work of Hardt et al. (2016) provides strong…
We study the iteration complexity of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for minimizing the gradient norm of smooth, possibly nonconvex functions. We provide several results, implying that the $\mathcal{O}(\epsilon^{-4})$ upper bound of…
We perform the first tight convergence analysis of the gradient method with varying step sizes when applied to smooth hypoconvex (weakly convex) functions. Hypoconvex functions are smooth nonconvex functions whose curvature is bounded and…
SGD (Stochastic Gradient Descent) is a popular algorithm for large scale optimization problems due to its low iterative cost. However, SGD can not achieve linear convergence rate as FGD (Full Gradient Descent) because of the inherent…
This paper proposes a novel approach to adaptive step sizes in stochastic gradient descent (SGD) by utilizing quantities that we have identified as numerically traceable -- the Lipschitz constant for gradients and a concept of the local…
The problem of stopping stochastic gradient descent (SGD) in an online manner, based solely on the observed trajectory, is a challenging theoretical problem with significant consequences for applications. While SGD is routinely monitored as…
We consider alternating gradient descent (AGD) with fixed step size applied to the asymmetric matrix factorization objective. We show that, for a rank-$r$ matrix $\mathbf{A} \in \mathbb{R}^{m \times n}$, $T = C…
Mini-batch stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is state of the art in large scale distributed training. The scheme can reach a linear speedup with respect to the number of workers, but this is rarely seen in practice as the scheme often…
Iteration complexities for optimizing smooth functions with first-order algorithms are typically stated in terms of a global Lipschitz constant of the gradient, and near-optimal results are then achieved using fixed step sizes. But many…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a prevalent optimization technique for large-scale distributed machine learning. While SGD computation can be efficiently divided between multiple machines, communication typically becomes a bottleneck…
The gradient descent (GD) method -- is a fundamental and likely the most popular optimization algorithm in machine learning (ML), with a history traced back to a paper in 1847 (Cauchy, 1847). It was studied under various assumptions,…
The existing analysis of asynchronous stochastic gradient descent (SGD) degrades dramatically when any delay is large, giving the impression that performance depends primarily on the delay. On the contrary, we prove much better guarantees…
For infinitesimal learning rates, stochastic gradient descent (SGD) follows the path of gradient flow on the full batch loss function. However moderately large learning rates can achieve higher test accuracies, and this generalization…