Related papers: Generalized Simulated Annealing
We introduce "AnnealSGD", a regularized stochastic gradient descent algorithm motivated by an analysis of the energy landscape of a particular class of deep networks with sparse random weights. The loss function of such networks can be…
This paper concerns a fundamental class of convex matrix optimization problems. It presents the first algorithm that uses optimal storage and provably computes a low-rank approximation of a solution. In particular, when all solutions have…
In this thesis we develop a novel framework to study smooth and strongly convex optimization algorithms, both deterministic and stochastic. Focusing on quadratic functions we are able to examine optimization algorithms as a recursive…
We present a stochastic setting for optimization problems with nonsmooth convex separable objective functions over linear equality constraints. To solve such problems, we propose a stochastic Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers…
Stochastic convex optimization is a basic and well studied primitive in machine learning. It is well known that convex and Lipschitz functions can be minimized efficiently using Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD). The Normalized Gradient…
We propose new sequential simulation-optimization algorithms for general convex optimization via simulation problems with high-dimensional discrete decision space. The performance of each choice of discrete decision variables is evaluated…
We consider linear prediction with a convex Lipschitz loss, or more generally, stochastic convex optimization problems of generalized linear form, i.e.~where each instantaneous loss is a scalar convex function of a linear function. We show…
The graduated optimization approach is a method for finding global optimal solutions for nonconvex functions by using a function smoothing operation with stochastic noise. This paper makes three contributions regarding graduated…
We develop an optimization algorithm, using simulated annealing for the quantification of patterns in astronomical data based on techniques developed for robotic vision applications. The methodology falls in the category of cost…
In this paper, an efficient modified Newton type algorithm is proposed for nonlinear unconstrianed optimization problems. The modified Hessian is a convex combination of the identity matrix (for steepest descent algorithm) and the Hessian…
This paper focuses on finding approximate solutions to stochastic optimal control problems with control domains being not necessarily convex, where the state trajectory is subject to controlled stochastic differential equations. The…
A practical challenge for structural estimation is the requirement to accurately minimize a sample objective function which is often non-smooth, non-convex, or both. This paper proposes a simple algorithm designed to find accurate solutions…
Boosting is a popular way to derive powerful learners from simpler hypothesis classes. Following previous work (Mason et al., 1999; Friedman, 2000) on general boosting frameworks, we analyze gradient-based descent algorithms for boosting…
We propose some algorithms to find local minima in nonconvex optimization and to obtain global minima in some degree from the Newton Second Law without friction. With the key observation of the velocity observable and controllable in the…
In this paper we introduce two conceptual algorithms for minimising abstract convex functions. Both algorithms rely on solving a proximal-type subproblem with an abstract Bregman distance based proximal term. We prove their convergence when…
Nonconvex optimization is central to modern machine learning, but the general framework of nonconvex optimization yields weak convergence guarantees that are too pessimistic compared to practice. On the other hand, while convexity enables…
Asynchronous algorithms have attracted much attention recently due to the crucial demands on solving large-scale optimization problems. However, the accelerated versions of asynchronous algorithms are rarely studied. In this paper, we…
The non-smooth finite-sum minimization is a fundamental problem in machine learning. This paper develops a distributed stochastic proximal-gradient algorithm with random reshuffling to solve the finite-sum minimization over time-varying…
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…
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…