相关论文: A Saddle Point Remedy: Power of Variable Eliminati…

In this paper, we study the problem of escaping from saddle points in smooth nonconvex optimization problems subject to a convex set $\mathcal{C}$. We propose a generic framework that yields convergence to a second-order stationary point of…

The article is devoted to the development of algorithmic methods ensuring efficient complexity bounds for strongly convex-concave saddle point problems in the case when one of the groups of variables is high-dimensional, and the other is…

We introduce a new sequential subspace optimization method for large-scale saddle-point problems. It solves iteratively a sequence of auxiliary saddle-point problems in low-dimensional subspaces, spanned by directions derived from…

The main challenge of nonconvex optimization is to find a global optimum, or at least to avoid ``bad'' local minima and meaningless stationary points. We study here the extent to which algorithms, as opposed to optimization models and…

This paper studies the role of over-parametrization in solving non-convex optimization problems. The focus is on the important class of low-rank matrix sensing, where we propose an infinite hierarchy of non-convex problems via the lifting…

We consider a setting in which an evolving surface is implicitly characterized as the zero level of a level set function. Such an implicit surface does not encode any information about the path of a single point on the evolving surface. In…

Despite their popularity in the field of continuous optimisation, second-order quasi-Newton methods are challenging to apply in machine learning, as the Hessian matrix is intractably large. This computational burden is exacerbated by the…

Adversarial neural networks solve many important problems in data science, but are notoriously difficult to train. These difficulties come from the fact that optimal weights for adversarial nets correspond to saddle points, and not…

This document introduces a strategy to solve linear optimization problems. The strategy is based on the bounding condition each constraint produces on each one of the problem's dimension. The solution of a linear optimization problem is…

Due to the highly non-convex nature of large-scale robust parameter estimation, avoiding poor local minima is challenging in real-world applications where input data is contaminated by a large or unknown fraction of outliers. In this paper,…

Despite their practical success, a theoretical understanding of the loss landscape of neural networks has proven challenging due to the high-dimensional, non-convex, and highly nonlinear structure of such models. In this paper, we…

We study the factor model problem, which aims to uncover low-dimensional structures in high-dimensional datasets. Adopting a robust data-driven approach, we formulate the problem as a saddle-point optimization. Our primary contribution is a…

This paper considers general rank-constrained optimization problems that minimize a general objective function $f(X)$ over the set of rectangular $n\times m$ matrices that have rank at most $r$. To tackle the rank constraint and also to…

The optimization of deep neural networks can be more challenging than traditional convex optimization problems due to the highly non-convex nature of the loss function, e.g. it can involve pathological landscapes such as saddle-surfaces…

Convergence to a saddle point for convex-concave functions has been studied for decades, while recent years has seen a surge of interest in non-convex (zero-sum) smooth games, motivated by their recent wide applications. It remains an…

A central challenge to using first-order methods for optimizing nonconvex problems is the presence of saddle points. First-order methods often get stuck at saddle points, greatly deteriorating their performance. Typically, to escape from…

Several fundamental problems that arise in optimization and computer science can be cast as follows: Given vectors $v_1,\ldots,v_m \in \mathbb{R}^d$ and a constraint family ${\cal B}\subseteq 2^{[m]}$, find a set $S \in \cal{B}$ that…

Gradient descent (GD) and stochastic gradient descent (SGD) are the workhorses of large-scale machine learning. While classical theory focused on analyzing the performance of these methods in convex optimization problems, the most notable…

This paper addresses constrained smooth saddle-point problems in settings where projection onto the feasible sets is computationally expensive. We bridge the gap between projection-based and projection-free optimization by introducing a…

In this work, we consider constrained stochastic optimization problems under hidden convexity, i.e., those that admit a convex reformulation via non-linear (but invertible) map $c(\cdot)$. A number of non-convex problems ranging from…