Related papers: A companion for the Kiefer--Wolfowitz--Blum stocha…
We introduce a statistical physics inspired supervised machine learning algorithm for classification and regression problems. The method is based on the invariances or stability of predicted results when known data is represented as…
We consider the problem of designing an allocation rule or an "online learning algorithm" for a class of bandit problems in which the set of control actions available at each time $s$ is a convex, compact subset of $\mathbb{R}^d$. Upon…
We apply a recently developed framework for analyzing the convergence of stochastic algorithms to the general problem of large-scale nonconvex composite optimization more generally, and nonconvex likelihood maximization in particular. Our…
In this paper, we show that the Away-step Stochastic Frank-Wolfe Algorithm (ASFW) and Pairwise Stochastic Frank-Wolfe algorithm (PSFW) converge linearly in expectation. We also show that if an algorithm convergences linearly in expectation…
This paper focus on investigating the distributed Riemannian stochastic optimization problem on the Stiefel manifold for multi-agent systems, where all the agents work collaboratively to optimize a function modeled by the average of their…
Simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation (SPSA) is an approach to gradient-free optimization introduced by Spall as a simplification of the approach of Kiefer and Wolfowitz. In many cases the most attractive option is the…
This paper presents a tractable algorithm for estimating an unknown Lipschitz function from noisy observations and establishes an upper bound on its convergence rate. The approach extends max-affine methods from convex shape-restricted…
Gradient-based methods are well-suited for derivative-free optimization (DFO), where finite-difference (FD) estimates are commonly used as gradient surrogates. Traditional stochastic approximation methods, such as Kiefer-Wolfowitz (KW) and…
We address a large-scale and nonconvex optimization problem, involving an aggregative term. This term can be interpreted as the sum of the contributions of N agents to some common good, with N large. We investigate a relaxation of this…
We propose a distributed algorithm based on Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) to minimize the sum of locally known convex functions using communication over a network. This optimization problem emerges in many applications…
We develop a stochastic approximation-type algorithm to solve finite state/action, infinite-horizon, risk-aware Markov decision processes. Our algorithm has two loops. The inner loop computes the risk by solving a stochastic saddle-point…
The performance of standard stochastic approximation implementations can vary significantly based on the choice of the steplength sequence, and in general, little guidance is provided about good choices. Motivated by this gap, in the first…
Column-sparse packing problems arise in several contexts in both deterministic and stochastic discrete optimization. We present two unifying ideas, (non-uniform) attenuation and multiple-chance algorithms, to obtain improved approximation…
This paper considers the problem of minimizing a convex expectation function with a set of inequality convex expectation constraints. We present a computable stochastic approximation type algorithm, namely the stochastic linearized proximal…
This paper aims to investigate the distributed stochastic optimization problems on compact embedded submanifolds (in the Euclidean space) for multi-agent network systems. To address the manifold structure, we propose a distributed…
Estimating probabilistic deformable template models is a new approach in the fields of computer vision and probabilistic atlases in computational anatomy. A first coherent statistical framework modelling the variability as a hidden random…
For finite-dimensional problems, stochastic approximation methods have long been used to solve stochastic optimization problems. Their application to infinite-dimensional problems is less understood, particularly for nonconvex objectives.…
The stochastic knapsack problem is the stochastic variant of the classical knapsack problem in which the algorithm designer is given a a knapsack with a given capacity and a collection of items where each item is associated with a profit…
We propose a new numerical scheme for approximating level-sets of Lipschitz multivariate functions which is robust to stochastic noise. The algorithm's main feature is an adaptive grid-based stochastic approximation strategy which…
Gradient flow in the 2-Wasserstein space is widely used to optimize functionals over probability distributions and is typically implemented using an interacting particle system with $n$ particles. Analyzing these algorithms requires showing…