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Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) has become a cornerstone of neural network optimization due to its computational efficiency and generalization capabilities. However, the gradient noise introduced by SGD is often assumed to be uncorrelated…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-23 Marcel Kühn , Bernd Rosenow

Machine learning models trained with \emph{stochastic} gradient descent (SGD) can generalize better than those trained with deterministic gradient descent (GD). In this work, we study SGD's impact on generalization through the lens of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-09 Hongjian Lan , Yucong Liu , Florian Schäfer

The empirical evidence indicates that stochastic optimization with heavy-tailed gradient noise is more appropriate to characterize the training of machine learning models than that with standard bounded gradient variance noise. Most…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-28 Hongxu Chen , Ke Wei , Xiaoming Yuan , Luo Luo

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is perhaps the most prevalent optimization method in modern machine learning. Contrary to the empirical practice of sampling from the datasets without replacement and with (possible) reshuffling at each…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-08 Xufeng Cai , Cheuk Yin Lin , Jelena Diakonikolas

We investigate the in-distribution generalization of machine learning algorithms. We depart from traditional complexity-based approaches by analyzing information-theoretic bounds that quantify the dependence between a learning algorithm and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-08-27 Borja Rodríguez-Gálvez , Ragnar Thobaben , Mikael Skoglund

The stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm has been widely used in statistical estimation for large-scale data due to its computational and memory efficiency. While most existing works focus on the convergence of the objective function…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-11-02 Xi Chen , Jason D. Lee , Xin T. Tong , Yichen Zhang

Many real-world decision problems require solving, again and again, combinatorial optimization instances drawn from a common distribution. A recent line of structured learning methods exploits this regularity by learning policies that pair…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-20 Pierre-Cyril Aubin-Frankowski , Yohann De Castro , Axel Parmentier , Alessandro Rudi

The generalization error of a learning algorithm refers to the discrepancy between the loss of a learning algorithm on training data and that on unseen testing data. Various information-theoretic bounds on the generalization error have been…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-24 Xuetong Wu , Jonathan H. Manton , Uwe Aickelin , Jingge Zhu

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD), which dates back to the 1950s, is one of the most popular and effective approaches for performing stochastic optimization. Research on SGD resurged recently in machine learning for optimizing convex loss…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-24 Jie Chen , Ronny Luss

In this paper, we propose a novel kernel stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm for large-scale supervised learning with general losses. Compared to traditional kernel SGD, our algorithm improves efficiency and scalability through an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Jinhui Bai , Andreas Christmann , Lei Shi

The non-asymptotic analysis of Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) typically yields bounds that decompose into a bias term and a variance term. In this work, we focus on the bias component and study the extent to which SGD can match the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-02 Daniel Cortild , Lucas Ketels , Juan Peypouquet , Guillaume Garrigos

In this paper, we use tools from rate-distortion theory to establish new upper bounds on the generalization error of statistical distributed learning algorithms. Specifically, there are $K$ clients whose individually chosen models are…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-11-23 Milad Sefidgaran , Romain Chor , Abdellatif Zaidi

The ability of machine learning (ML) algorithms to generalize well to unseen data has been studied through the lens of information theory, by bounding the generalization error with the input-output mutual information (MI), i.e., the MI…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-06-07 Kimia Nadjahi , Kristjan Greenewald , Rickard Brüel Gabrielsson , Justin Solomon

We present a theoretical analysis of some popular adaptive Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) methods in the small learning rate regime. Using the stochastic modified equations framework introduced by Li et al., we derive effective…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-09-29 Luca Callisti , Marco Romito , Francesco Triggiano

We present a general approach, based on exponential inequalities, to derive bounds on the generalization error of randomized learning algorithms. Using this approach, we provide bounds on the average generalization error as well as bounds…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-10 Fredrik Hellström , Giuseppe Durisi

We study stochastic nonconvex optimization under heavy-tailed noise. In this setting, the stochastic gradients only have bounded $p$-th central moment ($p$-BCM) for some $p \in (1,2]$. Building on the foundational work of Arjevani et al.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-01 Adrien Fradin , Abdurakhmon Sadiev , Laurent Condat , Peter Richtárik

Algorithm-dependent generalization error bounds are central to statistical learning theory. A learning algorithm may use a large hypothesis space, but the limited number of iterations controls its model capacity and generalization error.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-07-20 Wenlong Mou , Liwei Wang , Xiyu Zhai , Kai Zheng

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…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-24 Liviu Aolaritei , Michael I. Jordan

We derive a simple and model-independent formula for the change in the generalization gap due to a gradient descent update. We then compare the change in the test error for stochastic gradient descent to the change in test error from an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-13 Daniel A. Roberts

Existing generalization bounds fail to explain crucial factors that drive the generalization of modern neural networks. Since such bounds often hold uniformly over all parameters, they suffer from over-parametrization and fail to account…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-11-14 Songyan Hou , Parnian Kassraie , Anastasis Kratsios , Andreas Krause , Jonas Rothfuss