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We present a simple transformation of any linear program or semidefinite program into an equivalent convex optimization problem whose only constraints are linear equations. The objective function is defined on the whole space, making…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-10-07 James Renegar

We investigate a class of nonconvex optimization problems characterized by a feasible set consisting of level-bounded nonconvex regularizers, with a continuously differentiable objective. We propose a novel hybrid approach to tackle such…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-10-28 Xiangyu Yang , Hao Wang , Yichen Zhu , Xiao Wang

We design an algorithm which finds an $\epsilon$-approximate stationary point (with $\|\nabla F(x)\|\le \epsilon$) using $O(\epsilon^{-3})$ stochastic gradient and Hessian-vector products, matching guarantees that were previously available…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-25 Yossi Arjevani , Yair Carmon , John C. Duchi , Dylan J. Foster , Ayush Sekhari , Karthik Sridharan

First-order methods underpin most large-scale learning algorithms, yet their classical convergence guarantees hinge on carefully scheduled step-sizes that depend on the total horizon $T$, which is rarely known in advance. The Schedule-Free…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-12 Connor Brown

This work proposes a universal and adaptive second-order method for minimizing second-order smooth, convex functions. Our algorithm achieves $O(\sigma / \sqrt{T})$ convergence when the oracle feedback is stochastic with variance $\sigma^2$,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-12-13 Kimon Antonakopoulos , Ali Kavis , Volkan Cevher

In this work, we study first-order algorithms for solving Bilevel Optimization (BO) where the objective functions are smooth but possibly nonconvex in both levels and the variables are restricted to closed convex sets. As a first step, we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-13 Jeongyeol Kwon , Dohyun Kwon , Stephen Wright , Robert Nowak

In this paper, we propose two novel non-stationary first-order primal-dual algorithms to solve nonsmooth composite convex optimization problems. Unlike existing primal-dual schemes where the parameters are often fixed, our methods use…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-07-13 Quoc Tran-Dinh , Yuzixuan Zhu

Existing methods for nonconvex bilevel optimization (NBO) require prior knowledge of first- and second-order problem-specific parameters (e.g., Lipschitz constants and the Polyak-{\L}ojasiewicz (P{\L}) parameters) to set step sizes, a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-01 Xu Shi , Yinglin Du , Rufeng Xiao , Rujun Jiang

Nesterov's accelerated gradient (AG) method for minimizing a smooth strongly convex function $f$ is known to reduce $f({\bf x}_k)-f({\bf x}^*)$ by a factor of $\epsilon\in(0,1)$ after $k=O(\sqrt{L/\ell}\log(1/\epsilon))$ iterations, where…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-01-11 Sahar Karimi , Stephen Vavasis

In this work, we develop first-order (Hessian-free) and zero-order (derivative-free) implementations of the Cubically regularized Newton method for solving general non-convex optimization problems. For that, we employ finite difference…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-09-06 Nikita Doikov , Geovani Nunes Grapiglia

We study first-order methods for convex optimization problems with functions $f$ satisfying the recently proposed $\ell$-smoothness condition $||\nabla^{2}f(x)|| \le \ell\left(||\nabla f(x)||\right),$ which generalizes the $L$-smoothness…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-22 Alexander Tyurin

The graduated optimization approach, also known as the continuation method, is a popular heuristic to solving non-convex problems that has received renewed interest over the last decade. Despite its popularity, very little is known in terms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-07-28 Elad Hazan , Kfir Y. Levy , Shai Shalev-Shwartz

We study the oracle complexity of producing $(\delta,\epsilon)$-stationary points of Lipschitz functions, in the sense proposed by Zhang et al. [2020]. While there exist dimension-free randomized algorithms for producing such points within…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-01 Guy Kornowski , Ohad Shamir

First-order methods for solving convex optimization problems have been at the forefront of mathematical optimization in the last 20 years. The rapid development of this important class of algorithms is motivated by the success stories…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-01-07 Pavel Dvurechensky , Mathias Staudigl , Shimrit Shtern

We study the trade-offs between convergence rate and robustness to gradient errors in designing a first-order algorithm. We focus on gradient descent (GD) and accelerated gradient (AG) methods for minimizing strongly convex functions when…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-11-07 Necdet Serhat Aybat , Alireza Fallah , Mert Gurbuzbalaban , Asuman Ozdaglar

We propose an Adagrad-like algorithm for multi-objective unconstrained optimization that relies on the computation of a common descent direction only. Unlike classical local algorithms for multi-objective optimization, our approach does not…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-06 Marianna De Santis , Gabriele Eichfelder , Margherita Porcelli

Polyak-{\L}ojasiewicz (PL) [Polyak, 1963] condition is a weaker condition than the strong convexity but suffices to ensure a global convergence for the Gradient Descent algorithm. In this paper, we study the lower bound of algorithms using…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-08-03 Pengyun Yue , Cong Fang , Zhouchen Lin

An Adagrad-inspired class of algorithms for smooth unconstrained optimization is presented in which the objective function is never evaluated and yet the gradient norms decrease at least as fast as $\calO(1/\sqrt{k+1})$ while second-order…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-02-16 S. Gratton , Ph. L. Toint

In this work, we consider bilevel optimization when the lower-level problem is strongly convex. Recent works show that with a Hessian-vector product (HVP) oracle, one can provably find an $\epsilon$-stationary point within…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-26 Lesi Chen , Yaohua Ma , Jingzhao Zhang

We consider the optimization of a quadratic objective function whose gradients are only accessible through a stochastic oracle that returns the gradient at any given point plus a zero-mean finite variance random error. We present the first…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-02-25 Aymeric Dieuleveut , Nicolas Flammarion , Francis Bach