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Stochastic gradient descent is the method of choice for large scale optimization of machine learning objective functions. Yet, its performance is greatly variable and heavily depends on the choice of the stepsizes. This has motivated a…
We consider the stochastic optimization problem with smooth but not necessarily convex objectives in the heavy-tailed noise regime, where the stochastic gradient's noise is assumed to have bounded $p$th moment ($p\in(1,2]$). Zhang et al.…
We develop a stochastic trust-region algorithm for minimizing the sum of a possibly nonconvex Lipschitz-smooth function that can only be evaluated stochastically and a nonsmooth, deterministic, convex function. This algorithm, which we call…
Nonconvex-concave (NC-C) finite-sum minimax problems have wide applications in signal processing and machine learning tasks. Conventional stochastic gradient algorithms, which rely on uniform sampling for gradient estimation, often suffer…
We study the oracle complexity of nonsmooth nonconvex optimization, with the algorithm assumed to have access only to local function information. It has been shown by Davis, Drusvyatskiy, and Jiang (2023) that for nonsmooth Lipschitz…
We consider stochastic convex optimization problems where the objective is an expectation over smooth functions. For this setting we suggest a novel gradient estimate that combines two recent mechanism that are related to notion of…
In this paper, we consider the decentralized, stochastic nonconvex strongly-concave (NCSC) minimax problem with nonsmooth regularization terms on both primal and dual variables, wherein a network of $m$ computing agents collaborate via…
In this paper, we consider two distinct challenges in the resolution of nonsmooth stochastic optimization. Of these, the first pertains to the pronounced dependence of dimension in Gaussian smoothing-enabled zeroth-order schemes, impeding…
We develop a multidimensional version of Gradient-MUSIC for estimating the frequencies of a nonharmonic signal from noisy samples. The guiding principle is that frequency recovery should be based only on the signal subspace determined by…
We propose and analyze several stochastic gradient algorithms for finding stationary points or local minimum in nonconvex, possibly with nonsmooth regularizer, finite-sum and online optimization problems. First, we propose a simple proximal…
Stochastic variance reduced methods have shown strong performance in solving finite-sum problems. However, these methods usually require the users to manually tune the step-size, which is time-consuming or even infeasible for some…
The choice of batch-size in a stochastic optimization algorithm plays a substantial role for both optimization and generalization. Increasing the batch-size used typically improves optimization but degrades generalization. To address the…
Minimizing finite sums of functions is a central problem in optimization, arising in numerous practical applications. Such problems are commonly addressed using first-order optimization methods. However, these procedures cannot be used in…
We study the stochastic optimization problem from a continuous-time perspective, with a focus on the Stochastic Gradient Descent with Momentum (SGDM) method. We show that the trajectory of SGDM, despite its \emph{stochastic} nature,…
This paper presents a stochastic block-coordinate proximal Newton method for minimizing the sum of a blockwise Lipschitz-continuously differentiable function and a separable nonsmooth convex function. At each iteration, the method randomly…
We consider nonconvex-concave minimax optimization problems of the form $\min_{\bf x}\max_{\bf y\in{\mathcal Y}} f({\bf x},{\bf y})$, where $f$ is strongly-concave in $\bf y$ but possibly nonconvex in $\bf x$ and ${\mathcal Y}$ is a convex…
This work analyzes the convergence of a class of smoothing-based gradient descent methods when applied to optimization problems. In particular, Gaussian smoothing is employed to define a nonlocal gradient that reduces high-frequency noise,…
Learning representation from relative similarity comparisons, often called ordinal embedding, gains rising attention in recent years. Most of the existing methods are batch methods designed mainly based on the convex optimization, say, the…
Smooth minimax optimization problems play a central role in a wide range of applications, including machine learning, game theory, and operations research. However, existing algorithmic frameworks vary significantly depending on the problem…
We propose a new gradient descent algorithm with added stochastic terms for finding the global optimizers of nonconvex optimization problems. A key component in the algorithm is the adaptive tuning of the randomness based on the value of…