Related papers: A stochastic approximation algorithm with multipli…
In this paper we estimate the expected error of a stochastic approximation algorithm where the maximum of a function is found using finite differences of a stochastic representation of that function. An error estimate of $O(n^{-1/5})$ for…
This paper considers an optimization problem for a dynamical system whose evolution depends on a collection of binary decision variables. We develop scalable approximation algorithms with provable suboptimality bounds to provide…
Many machine learning and optimization algorithms are built upon the framework of stochastic approximation (SA), for which the selection of step-size (or learning rate) $\{\alpha_n\}$ is crucial for success. An essential condition for…
We analyse a multilevel Monte Carlo method for the approximation of distribution functions of univariate random variables. Since, by assumption, the target distribution is not known explicitly, approximations have to be used. We provide an…
We show that for separable convex optimization, random stepsizes fully accelerate Gradient Descent. Specifically, using inverse stepsizes i.i.d. from the Arcsine distribution improves the iteration complexity from $O(k)$ to $O(k^{1/2})$,…
In this paper, we aim to compute numerical approximation integral by using an adaptive Monte Carlo algorithm. We propose a stratified sampling algorithm based on an iterative method which splits the strata following some quantities called…
In big data analysis, a simple task such as linear regression can become very challenging as the variable dimension $p$ grows. As a result, variable screening is inevitable in many scientific studies. In recent years, randomized algorithms…
Learning representation from relative similarity comparisons, often called ordinal embedding, gains rising attention in recent years. Most of the existing methods are based on semi-definite programming (\textit{SDP}), which is generally…
Motivated by penalized likelihood maximization in complex models, we study optimization problems where neither the function to optimize nor its gradient have an explicit expression, but its gradient can be approximated by a Monte Carlo…
What advantage do \emph{sequential} procedures provide over batch algorithms for testing properties of unknown distributions? Focusing on the problem of testing whether two distributions $\mathcal{D}_1$ and $\mathcal{D}_2$ on $\{1,\dots,…
This paper discusses a methodology for determining a functional representation of a random process from a collection of scattered pointwise samples. The present work specifically focuses onto random quantities lying in a high dimensional…
The convergence of stochastic gradient descent is highly dependent on the step-size, especially on non-convex problems such as neural network training. Step decay step-size schedules (constant and then cut) are widely used in practice…
We analyze two classical algorithms for solving additively composite convex optimization problems where the objective is the sum of a smooth term and a nonsmooth regularizer: proximal stochastic gradient method for a single regularizer; and…
We consider the unconstrained optimization problem whose objective function is composed of a smooth and a non-smooth conponents where the smooth component is the expectation a random function. This type of problem arises in some interesting…
The distributed optimization problem is set up in a collection of nodes interconnected via a communication network. The goal is to find the minimizer of a global objective function formed by the addition of partial functions locally known…
In this paper, we investigate the randomized algorithms for block matrix multiplication from random sampling perspective. Based on the A-optimal design criterion, the optimal sampling probabilities and sampling block sizes are obtained. To…
We consider the problem of approximating an unknown function $u\in L^2(D,\rho)$ from its evaluations at given sampling points $x^1,\dots,x^n\in D$, where $D\subset \mathbb{R}^d$ is a general domain and $\rho$ is a probability measure. The…
Stochastic approximation techniques have been used in various contexts in data science. We propose a stochastic version of the forward-backward algorithm for minimizing the sum of two convex functions, one of which is not necessarily…
Stochastic Boolean Function Evaluation is the problem of determining the value of a given Boolean function f on an unknown input x, when each bit of x_i of x can only be determined by paying an associated cost c_i. The assumption is that x…
We study stochastic optimization of nonconvex loss functions, which are typical objectives for training neural networks. We propose stochastic approximation algorithms which optimize a series of regularized, nonlinearized losses on large…