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Related papers: Zeroth-Order Nonconvex Nonsmooth Optimization with…

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We study the impact of nonconvexity on the complexity of nonsmooth optimization, emphasizing objectives such as piecewise linear functions, which may not be weakly convex. We focus on a dimension-independent analysis, slightly modifying a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-10-11 Siyu Kong , A. S. Lewis

In this work, we present a globalized stochastic semismooth Newton method for solving stochastic optimization problems involving smooth nonconvex and nonsmooth convex terms in the objective function. We assume that only noisy gradient and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-03-12 Andre Milzarek , Xiantao Xiao , Shicong Cen , Zaiwen Wen , Michael Ulbrich

An algorithm is proposed, analyzed, and tested for minimizing locally Lipschitz objective functions that may be nonconvex and/or nonsmooth. The algorithm, which is built upon the gradient-sampling methodology, is designed specifically for…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-02 Albert S. Berahas , Frank E. Curtis , Lara Zebiane

Stochastic first-order methods are standard for training large-scale machine learning models. Random behavior may cause a particular run of an algorithm to result in a highly suboptimal objective value, whereas theoretical guarantees are…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-02 Eduard Gorbunov , Marina Danilova , Innokentiy Shibaev , Pavel Dvurechensky , Alexander Gasnikov

In this study, we consider an optimization problem with uncertainty dependent on decision variables, which has recently attracted attention due to its importance in machine learning and pricing applications. In this problem, the gradient of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-31 Yuya Hikima , Akiko Takeda

We investigate the finite-time analysis of finding ($\delta,\epsilon$)-stationary points for nonsmooth nonconvex objectives in decentralized stochastic optimization. A set of agents aim at minimizing a global function using only their local…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-04 Emre Sahinoglu , Shahin Shahrampour

Constrained optimization problems where both the objective and constraints may be nonsmooth and nonconvex arise across many learning and data science settings. In this paper, we show for any Lipschitz, weakly convex objectives and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-17 Zhichao Jia , Benjamin Grimmer

We propose a first order algorithm, a modified version of FISTA, to solve an optimization problem with an objective function that is a sum of a possibly nonconvex function, with Lipschitz continuous gradient, and a convex function which can…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-08-20 Chee-Khian Sim

We study convex composite optimization problems, where the objective function is given by the sum of a prox-friendly function and a convex function whose subgradients are estimated under heavy-tailed noise. Existing work often employs…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-14 Chuan He , Zhaosong Lu

In recent years, nonconvex minimax problems have attracted significant attention due to their broad applications in machine learning, including generative adversarial networks, robust optimization and adversarial training. Most existing…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-06 Yan Gao , Yongchao Liu

Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization with ordinal feedback has emerged as a fundamental problem in modern machine learning systems, particularly in human-in-the-loop settings such as reinforcement learning from human feedback, preference…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-23 Haishan Ye

In this paper, we study zeroth-order algorithms for minimax optimization problems that are nonconvex in one variable and strongly-concave in the other variable. Such minimax optimization problems have attracted significant attention lately…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-04-06 Zhongruo Wang , Krishnakumar Balasubramanian , Shiqian Ma , Meisam Razaviyayn

In this paper we analyze a zeroth-order proximal stochastic gradient method suitable for the minimization of weakly convex stochastic optimization problems. We consider nonsmooth and nonlinear stochastic composite problems, for which…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-21 Spyridon Pougkakiotis , Dionysios S. Kalogerias

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…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-17 Guy Kornowski , Swati Padmanabhan , Ohad Shamir

This paper considers the smooth bilevel optimization in which the lower-level problem is strongly convex and the upper-level problem is possibly nonconvex. We focus on the stochastic setting where the algorithm can access the unbiased…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-16 Zhuanghua Liu , Luo Luo

We introduce a new zeroth-order algorithm for private stochastic optimization on nonconvex and nonsmooth objectives. Given a dataset of size $M$, our algorithm ensures $(\alpha,\alpha\rho^2/2)$-R\'enyi differential privacy and finds a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-07-01 Qinzi Zhang , Hoang Tran , Ashok Cutkosky

This work addresses the finite-time analysis of nonsmooth nonconvex stochastic optimization under Riemannian manifold constraints. We adapt the notion of Goldstein stationarity to the Riemannian setting as a performance metric for nonsmooth…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-27 Emre Sahinoglu , Youbang Sun , Shahin Shahrampour

Saddle-point problems have recently gained increased attention from the machine learning community, mainly due to applications in training Generative Adversarial Networks using stochastic gradients. At the same time, in some applications…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-09-07 Abdurakhmon Sadiev , Aleksandr Beznosikov , Pavel Dvurechensky , Alexander Gasnikov

In this paper, we address stochastic optimization problems involving a composition of a non-smooth outer function and a smooth inner function, a formulation frequently encountered in machine learning and operations research. To deal with…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-15 Tommaso Giovannelli , Jingfu Tan , Luis Nunes Vicente

In this paper, we consider non-smooth stochastic convex optimization with two function evaluations per round under infinite noise variance. In the classical setting when noise has finite variance, an optimal algorithm, built upon the…