相关论文: How to trap a gradient flow

Derivative-free optimization (DFO) is vital in solving complex optimization problems where only noisy function evaluations are available through an oracle. Within this domain, DFO via finite difference (FD) approximation has emerged as a…

In this paper, we address the optimization problem of minimizing $Q(df_x)$ over a Hadamard manifold ${\cal M}$, where $f$ is a convex function on ${\cal M}$, $df_x$ is the differential of $f$ at $x \in {\cal M}$, and $Q$ is a function on…

Derivative-free Riemannian optimization (DFRO) aims to minimize an objective function using only function evaluations, under the constraint that the decision variables lie on a Riemannian manifold. The rapid increase in problem dimensions…

This paper reviews the gradient sampling methodology for solving nonsmooth, nonconvex optimization problems. An intuitively straightforward gradient sampling algorithm is stated and its convergence properties are summarized. Throughout this…

In this paper, we consider the problem of empirical risk minimization (ERM) of smooth, strongly convex loss functions using iterative gradient-based methods. A major goal of this literature has been to compare different algorithms, such as…

This paper investigates distributed zeroth-order optimization for smooth nonconvex problems, targeting the trade-off between convergence rate and sampling cost per zeroth-order gradient estimation in current algorithms that use either the…

Decentralized optimization algorithms have received much attention due to the recent advances in network information processing. However, conventional decentralized algorithms based on projected gradient descent are incapable of handling…

We propose a variational form of the BDF2 method as an alternative to the commonly used minimizing movement scheme for the time-discrete approximation of gradient flows in abstract metric spaces. Assuming uniform semi-convexity --- but no…

A new stepsize for gradient method is proposed. Combining it with the exact line search stepsizes, the gradient method achieves the optimal solution in 5 steps for 3 dimensional quadratic function minimization problem. The new stepsize is…

Stochastic Gradient (SG) is the defacto iterative technique to solve stochastic optimization (SO) problems with a smooth (non-convex) objective $f$ and a stochastic first-order oracle. SG's attractiveness is due in part to its simplicity of…

Sampling a target probability distribution with an unknown normalization constant is a fundamental challenge in computational science and engineering. Recent work shows that algorithms derived by considering gradient flows in the space of…

We study the space complexity of solving the bias-regularized SVM problem in the streaming model. This is a classic supervised learning problem that has drawn lots of attention, including for developing fast algorithms for solving the…

Finding a local minimum or maximum of a function is often achieved through the gradient-descent optimization method. For a function in dimension d, the gradient requires to compute at each step d partial derivatives. This method is for…

Subspace learning and matrix factorization problems have great many applications in science and engineering, and efficient algorithms are critical as dataset sizes continue to grow. Many relevant problem formulations are non-convex, and in…

Turbulent flows are chaotic and unsteady, but their statistical distribution converges to a statistical steady state. Engineering quantities of interest typically take the form of time-average statistics such as $ \frac{1}{t} \int_0^t f (…

We study the gradient descent (GD) dynamics of a depth-2 linear neural network with a single input and output. We show that GD converges at an explicit linear rate to a global minimum of the training loss, even with a large stepsize --…

Gradient-flow (GF) viewpoints unify and illuminate optimization algorithms, yet most GF analyses focus on unconstrained settings. We develop a geometry-respecting framework for constrained problems by (i) reparameterizing feasible sets with…

The graduated optimization approach, also known as the continuation method, is a popular heuristic to solving non-convex problems that has received renewed interest over the last decade. Despite its popularity, very little is known in terms…

We consider the optimization problem of the form $\min_{x \in \mathbb{R}^d} f(x) \triangleq \mathbb{E}_{\xi} [F(x; \xi)]$, where the component $F(x;\xi)$ is $L$-mean-squared Lipschitz but possibly nonconvex and nonsmooth. The recently…

A key challenge in modern deep learning theory is to explain the remarkable success of gradient-based optimization methods when training large-scale, complex deep neural networks. Though linear convergence of such methods has been proved…