arXiv research

Paper introduces SGA for barycenter optimization in optimal transport.

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) has become popular for solving large scale supervised machine learning optimization problems such as SVM, due to their strong theoretical guarantees. While the closely related Dual Coordinate Ascent (DCA) method has been implemented in various software packages, it has so far lacked go…

Stochastic dual coordinate ascent (SDCA) is an effective technique for solving regularized loss minimization problems in machine learning. This paper considers an extension of SDCA under the mini-batch setting that is often used in practice. Our main contribution is to introduce an accelerated mini-batch version of SDC…

The stochastic dual coordinate-ascent (S-DCA) technique is a useful alternative to the traditional stochastic gradient-descent algorithm for solving large-scale optimization problems due to its scalability to large data sets and strong theoretical guarantees. However, the available S-DCA formulation is limited to finit…

We introduce a proximal version of dual coordinate ascent method. We demonstrate how the derived algorithmic framework can be used for numerous regularized loss minimization problems, including $\ell_1$ regularization and structured output SVM. The convergence rates we obtain match, and sometimes improve, state-of-the-…

Uniform sampling of training data has been commonly used in traditional stochastic optimization algorithms such as Proximal Stochastic Gradient Descent (prox-SGD) and Proximal Stochastic Dual Coordinate Ascent (prox-SDCA). Although uniform sampling can guarantee that the sampled stochastic quantity is an unbiased estim…

New method accelerates convergence for entropy-regularized reinforcement learning problems.

A new method for distributed optimization reduces communication rounds without minibatches.

The paper optimizes watermarking of LLMs, improving detection ability.

We introduce a proximal version of the stochastic dual coordinate ascent method and show how to accelerate the method using an inner-outer iteration procedure. We analyze the runtime of the framework and obtain rates that improve state-of-the-art results for various key machine learning optimization problems including …

This paper introduces AdaSDCA: an adaptive variant of stochastic dual coordinate ascent (SDCA) for solving the regularized empirical risk minimization problems. Our modification consists in allowing the method adaptively change the probability distribution over the dual variables throughout the iterative process. AdaSD…

We present a dual subspace ascent algorithm for support vector machine training that respects a budget constraint limiting the number of support vectors. Budget methods are effective for reducing the training time of kernel SVM while retaining high accuracy. To date, budget training is available only for primal (SGD-ba…

Improves posterior approximation speed for Dirichlet process mixture models.

Study efficient convergence of RL algorithm with function approximation.

Gradient ascent method successfully removes specific data points from neural networks without retraining.

The minimization of convex objectives coming from linear supervised learning problems, such as penalized generalized linear models, can be formulated as finite sums of convex functions. For such problems, a large set of stochastic first-order solvers based on the idea of variance reduction are available and combine bot…

New taxonomy and improved solvers for discrete energy minimization.

We present a new algorithm based on an gradient ascent for a general Active Exploration bandit problem in the fixed confidence setting. This problem encompasses several well studied problems such that the Best Arm Identification or Thresholding Bandits. It consists of a new sampling rule based on an online lazy mirror …

New solver MPLP++ outperforms existing solvers for dense graph models.

We propose a new stochastic dual coordinate ascent technique that can be applied to a wide range of regularized learning problems. Our method is based on Alternating Direction Multiplier Method (ADMM) to deal with complex regularization functions such as structured regularizations. Although the original ADMM is a batch…

TiAda adapts adaptive gradient methods for nonconvex minimax optimization.

New algorithm solves federated minimax optimization problems.

Gradient descent-ascent converges to strict local minmax equilibria with a finite timescale separation.

Lazy neural networks are vulnerable to adversarial attacks.

SoftAD improves classification accuracy with less fine-tuning and fewer computational costs.

The paper connects two clustering methods by showing gradient ascent flow can move up the cluster tree.

This work investigates the training of conditional random fields (CRFs) via the stochastic dual coordinate ascent (SDCA) algorithm of Shalev-Shwartz and Zhang (2016). SDCA enjoys a linear convergence rate and a strong empirical performance for binary classification problems. However, it has never been used to train CRF…

Dual training method for EBMs with overparametrized neural networks.

SAVO actor improves reinforcement learning by avoiding local optima in complex Q-functions.

In this paper we consider solving saddle point problems using two variants of Gradient Descent-Ascent algorithms, Extra-gradient (EG) and Optimistic Gradient Descent Ascent (OGDA) methods. We show that both of these algorithms admit a unified analysis as approximations of the classical proximal point method for solving…

Generative adversarial networks (GANs) are a widely used framework for learning generative models. Wasserstein GANs (WGANs), one of the most successful variants of GANs, require solving a minmax optimization problem to global optimality, but are in practice successfully trained using stochastic gradient descent-ascent.…

DS-GDA solves nonconvex-nonconcave problems without regularity conditions.

Algorithm optimizes constrained reinforcement learning with dual variables.

A scalable method for BED with implicit models using approximate gradients.

Optimizes binary regression models with gradient ascent-descent methods.

We consider nonconvex-concave minimax optimization problems of the form $\min_{\bf x}\max_{\bf y\in{\mathcal Y}} f({\bf x},{\bf y})$, where $f$ is strongly-concave in $\bf y$ but possibly nonconvex in $\bf x$ and ${\mathcal Y}$ is a convex and compact set. We focus on the stochastic setting, where we can only access an…

New ODE models show saddle-point optimization methods converge differently, with last-iterate convergence for OGDA.

The goal of policy gradient approaches is to find a policy in a given class of policies which maximizes the expected return. Given a differentiable model of the policy, we want to apply a gradient-ascent technique to reach a local optimum. We mainly use gradient ascent, because it is theoretically well researched. The …

Paper studies convergence of Mean-Field GDA dynamics for MNE of continuous games.

In 1963, Polyak proposed a simple condition that is sufficient to show a global linear convergence rate for gradient descent. This condition is a special case of the Łojasiewicz inequality proposed in the same year, and it does not require strong convexity (or even convexity). In this work, we show that this much-older…

This paper introduces a new method to evaluate multiple policies simultaneously.

A new method trains physics-constrained neural networks more efficiently.

Improves BED scalability for implicit models.

Algorithm converges to Nash equilibria in competitive games.

Method identifies mixed Nash equilibria in high dimensions for training mixtures of GANs.

Gradient Descent Ascent converges to von-Neumann solution in hidden zero-sum games.

Paper proposes algorithms for solving nonconvex-nonconcave problems with complexity guarantees.

We study the iteration complexity of the optimistic gradient descent-ascent (OGDA) method and the extra-gradient (EG) method for finding a saddle point of a convex-concave unconstrained min-max problem. To do so, we first show that both OGDA and EG can be interpreted as approximate variants of the proximal point method…